


looking down to not give up

by FunAndWhimsy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Male Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Nightmares, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Other, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 09:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15906015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunAndWhimsy/pseuds/FunAndWhimsy
Summary: Pidge has dreamed of space their whole life; even after Kerberos, after everything, standing on the bridge of a spaceship halfway across the universe is almost too good to be true. But it doesn't change the desperation to find their family, or the creeping despair every time the search is thwarted, or the nightmares that won't let them sleep at night. And the wonder of open space is no match for the year of blank space in Shiro's memories, or the trauma that keeps bringing him to his knees.They'll need something stronger for that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sara Watkins' "Invisible".
> 
> Liberties taken with canon when it comes to various reveals and pacing.
> 
> Love as always to [epershand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epershand) for beta-ing and general put-up-with-ery.

The night after Shiro puts all the pieces together, the night it finally clicks for him why Pidge is so familiar, there's a knock on his door hours after he should be asleep. It's Katie - it's Pidge - it's - anyway, Shiro's not surprised they can't sleep either. He's not really sure anyone here’s really sleeping, not when they're supposed to, not as much as they should.

"I assume you want me to keep calling you Pidge," he says, once Pidge is settled on his bed, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them. "At least until you tell the others. If you tell the others?"

Shiro sits at the foot of his bed, cross-legged, giving them as much space as a man his size can give anyone in a bed this size, tucked into a cubby in the wall like it is.

"Yeah," Pidge says. "And I don't - I want them to know, I think, I just - I like being a boy, right now."

"Okay," Shiro says. "Let me know if that changes?"

Pidge nods, and sighs. "I didn't come in here for that, I just wanted to...it's stupid, I know you don't remember anything. But I have to ask if you can - anything, about them, the mission or the time after, or - I don't know _anything_ , I'm not good at not knowing things."

His memory from before the Galra is still pretty impeccable, and that phrase makes something in his chest twist up tight; sudden flashes of Commander Holt complaining every time they had to wait for something to be declassified, Matt throwing his hands up and despairing at some readings that didn't make any sense. It's absurd he didn't recognize Pidge right away, even if he’d only met Katie a couple times.

"It’s coming back pretty slowly," he says, "but I can tell you about working with them? I've got a few good stories about Commander Holt letting a bunch of higher-ups have it anytime they disagreed with him because he knew they couldn't take him off the mission."

"Sometimes he'd come home still ranting," Pidge says, "or Matt would come home still all red from Dad being embarrassing."

He already looks less agitated than he had, sinking down a little into Shiro's pillows, relaxing his hold on his legs a little so he can curl up more comfortably on the bed. Is it something about the Holts, or about Shiro himself, that he seems to be able to make all of them so comfortable with him so fast?

"So a little more than six months before we were supposed to take off, there was some big fuck-up that left a lot of things marked classified that weren't supposed to be. Including basically all the specs he and Matt needed to get to work on basically everything they had planned for the next month. And after a week of this - " Shiro starts, and once he's started he can't stop, hasn't been able to talk about the good times for so long it's like a dam breaking. He tells Pidge about Sam eventually just hacking the network and changing almost everything _but_ their own work to highly classified, and having the nerve to play innocent after he'd sent a list of all the weaknesses he'd exploited to the network security guys from his official email. How people were still running into classification issues for months afterward, how not long before liftoff someone found a "highly classified" baby picture of Matt and Katie in place of whatever file they were after, and Sam just laughed about how he'd forgotten he did that (and sent them a backup he made. Maybe. Shiro’s pretty sure). He's almost finished with the last of the hacking fallout when he realizes Pidge is asleep, and his throat is sore, and the artificial sunrise has already started.

Shiro shakes his head a little, still smiling, and throws one spare blanket over Pidge before fishing another one and a pillow out of the drawer under the bed so he can grab a quick nap on the floor.

*

The light's on in the kitchen when Pidge gives up on falling asleep; his usual late-night hideout is the lab, so he can get stuff done without anyone interrupting, but it's not like he ever really gets much done, and now that he's thinking about it he's kind of hungry. And lonely, a little bit, maybe.

Shiro's fiddling with the goo machine, swearing a little under his breath. 

"Hunk shut it down overnight for cleaning," he says, regrets not knocking on the door frame first when Shiro jumps. "Sorry."

Shiro shakes his head a little, turns away from the machine to shoot him a small, crooked smile.

"It's fine," he says, and sighs. "I don't know why I'm disappointed, it's not like I actually wanted goo."

"I don't know it as well as he does, but I can take a look and see if the cleaning program's done? There's some stuff in the fridge, though."

"Great," Shiro says, "cold goo." 

He hangs the hose back in place; his shirt's tight enough Pidge can see the muscles moving in his back, a little different on his Galra arm side. Pidge's fingers itch a little, the way they do when his dad brings him some new piece of tech to disassemble, the way they do when someone hands him a keyboard and a problem to solve. Too bad there's no good way to say _hey, let me poke at your alien arm and see how it works and can I take it apart if I promise to try real hard to put it back together_?

"Do you know what any of this is?" Shiro asks, half-hidden behind the refrigerator door. Maybe Shiro getting halfway across the room and opening a door while Pidge wasn't paying attention is what he's talking about when he lectures Pidge about his situational awareness. Pidge crosses the room and ducks under his arm to peer in; the shelves are surprisingly full of a surprising variety of surprisingly food-looking food.

"Man," he says, "I knew he was planning on taking Coran foraging, I had no idea it went this well."

"Do we think it's all edible?"

Pidge shrugs. "One way to find out."

There's a bowl of bright red berries in front of Pidge, the exact color of the late-summer strawberries that are too sweet for everyone else, and if he dies because Coran got confused about what poisons humans they'd probably be an okay way to go. Prize claimed, he ducks back from under Shiro's arm, glancing up like he's going to get an idea of how it attaches or works or whatever through his long-sleeved shirt.

"Fair enough," Shiro says, spends a few more minutes rummaging before he comes up with a bowl of maybe sort of nuts and a bottle of...something.

"That's brave," he says.

Shiro laughs. "There's a juicer in the sink, so it's either some kind of fruit or veggie juice or a false flag operation to trick someone into drinking...whatever."

"I like those odds."

"That's the spirit," Shiro says, bumps the fridge closed with his hip and sets his food on the island so he can start hunting for dishes. Pidge hops up on the counter and digs right into the berries; not as sweet as he wanted, but they're still good, and _fresh_ , and (most importantly) not goo. Shiro pours him a glass of the purple juice, and one for himself, and leans against the island instead of sitting down. They're almost the same height like this. For certain values of ‘almost’ that mean Pidge still has to look up to see his face.

"You gonna eat?" Pidge asks, mouth half-full, fingers already staining with berry juice.

"In a minute," Shiro says. "Just waiting to see if you end up poisoned."

Pidge only barely stops himself from the shitty joke he wants to make, about Shiro's history of protecting his family, about his habit of throwing himself on the sword, _ha, some hero you are_. But Pidge isn't enough of a dark humor person to say it right, isn't sure how much of a joke it really is, isn't cruel enough to cut like that no matter how often he wants to lash at out at Shiro for what he knows, he _knows_ isn't really Shiro's fault, Shiro’s failure. 

"So far, so good," he says, instead, and tosses another few berries into his mouth. Every tenth one, give or take, is stupidly, painfully sweet; maybe if Pidge can keep himself from eating them all, Hunk'll make a pie. Or jam, or something. The juice is okay, a little bit like orange juice when there's too much pith in it; the nuts are a total bust. 

"They'll probably be good cooked," Shiro says, kindly, and puts them away. Or not kindly, maybe he's really looking forward to what you get when you cook an alien Brussels sprout hidden in an m&m shell that tastes like wood. Maybe they're high in protein, he's probably into that.

Shiro digs into the berries with his Galra hand, and Pidge stares a little at the smooth, plastic-y surface, all the seams in none of the places Pidge would put a seam if he were building an arm (not that he’s ever thought about it before this second), the lack of visible points of articulation. Shiro’s elbow and wrist and fingers move like they’re just flesh and bone and muscle and ligaments, no seams or visible joints on any of them. Maybe the plastic or metal or whatever is just a casing, more of his original arm under there than he knows. Or maybe - probably - Galran robotics are just that absurdly advanced. The berries are staining his fingers a little , so whatever it’s made of is porous.

"You can ask, if you have a question," Shiro says; Pidge jumps, can feel his face going bright red.

"Sorry," he says. "It's just - sorry."

"Your dad would have attacked me with a screwdriver by now," Shiro says. "You're fine. I mean it, you can ask, I just probably don't know the answer."

"Does it hurt?” Pidge asks, surprising himself a little. Surprising the both of them, by the look on Shiro's face.

"Not really. I've burned myself with it a couple times, but that's it. They fucked up the nerves at the attachment point, I don't know if it was an accident, but I'm a little numb there. Maybe it'd hurt if they hadn't, I don't know."

"I'm sorry," Pidge says.

"For asking? I really don't mind."

"In general," Pidge says. "For whatever happened to you."

Shiro's smile is impossibly gentle, like he's figured out it just hit Pidge for the first time just how big this is, how big everything was, just how much of everything is behind the year he spent missing his dad, missing Matt. A year felt too long when Pidge was just sad and frustrated; it feels infinite, now, all of a sudden, with just a taste of every awful thing they might have gone through, might still be going through.

"Thanks," he says, stands up straight. "I'm going to the training deck. You should try to get some sleep, if you can."

"Yeah," Pidge says, but as soon as Shiro's gone he hops off the counter and takes the last of the berries and juice to the lab. If he sleeps tonight, he’ll just end up dreaming about something horrible; he doesn’t really see the point.

*

Shiro jolts awake at the knock on the door; grateful for it, and for how quickly whatever he was dreaming of lets go of him. He doesn’t remember anything about it, but his dreams are never good.

Pidge is standing there with his fist raised, ready to bang on the door again, eyes red and hair even wilder than usual and Shiro's not sure but he might be shaking? Shit. Shiro reaches for his vest, can't possibly have time to fully suit up if Pidge is this wild, this afraid, but - 

Pidge falls into his chest, wraps his hands in Shiro's shirt and holds on tight, tight, drawing in deep, gulping breaths.

"You killed him," he says, takes another few painful-sounding breaths, like he’s trying so hard not to cry he’s choking on air. "You killed him, he trusted you and you - "

"Hey," Shiro says, "whoa. It's okay, he's alive."

He wraps his arms around Pidge, slowly, carefully, leaves plenty of room for him to break out if he doesn't come out of it fast enough to be okay with Shiro touching him. There has to be a reason he came here, though, instead of going to one of the others, and it doesn't look like he's about to get violent.

"I know," Pidge says, small and miserable. "I know, it was just so - you tried to save him, but you hit an artery when you attacked, and I had to - there was so much blood, Shiro."

"I have that one, sometimes,” he says. “More often, it’s like I’m as hungry for blood as I tried to make them think I was, and I kill him on purpose, and it feels - Or it doesn't work, I hurt him and they take him anyway and I have to watch him go down quick because he’s already at a disadvantage, and he dies thinking I wanted that."

Pidge tightens his grip on Shiro's shirt, sucks in a sharp breath - that can't possibly have been the right thing to say. Shiro's usually on the other side of this, shit. He's about to apologize when Pidge's grip loosens and his shoulders relax a little bit. Okay. Progress.

"You want to sit down?" he asks, and Pidge nods. "I'm going to move us towards the bed, okay? Just move with me, I’ve got you."

Another nod, and Shiro walks them back from the door, letting it slide shut behind them. Pidge is trying to walk with him but he's slow, clumsy, and Shiro's dragging as much as guiding him the few steps to the bed, so when they’re close Shiro just lifts him up and sets him on the mattress. He's still shaky, eyes still big, looks even smaller than Pidge normally does, especially when he curls up a little on himself. The pajamas Coran gave them, loose on everyone but just straight up too big for Pidge, aren't helping. He shouldn't even be here, shouldn’t be dealing with this, with any of this.

That line of thinking doesn't help anyone, though, least of all Pidge, so Shiro just sits at the foot of the bed and watches his breathing even out.

"Up until tonight, I was still dreaming about everything that could've happened to them on Kerberos," Pidge says. "It sucks, but at least I'm used to it."

"That's why you don't sleep," Shiro says.

"Mostly. And I focus better at night."

"You won't be able to focus on anything if you don't get enough sleep," Shiro says, laughs when Pidge rolls his eyes. "I know, I know, sorry. Instinct."

Pidge is loosening up a little bit at least, lowering his legs so he's sitting cross-legged instead of with his knees up to his ears. And he looks a little less certain that Shiro might snap at any minute, announce he did in fact kill Matt in cold blood and now he's going to kill Pidge, too.

"Is it more or less reassuring that I know pretty much exactly where to hit Matt if I'd wanted him to die?"

"A little bit more, actually."

"He knew, too. Knows. And I - I couldn’t take any chances, not with his life, but…I don't think he would have died in the arena. He's got a good survival instinct and that fight was all dodging and pattern recognition, and he’s better than me at both. All he’d need was one good near-miss to get him out of his head and he’d be fine. But it’d be easier for him to make himself essential at a work camp, and I hoped they’d keep him with your dad."

"If they'd given him a cyborg arm," Pidge says, almost smiling, "he would've taken it apart and then have to try to put it back together one-handed."

"Probably forget where he was and snap at someone for trying to help fix it. I've seen what happens when you interrupt him. Strapped down and high on anesthesia on a Galra exam table - "

“’If you idiots would give me _five minutes_ I’d have it fixed, we all know I’m smarter than you.’”

“Jesus,” Shiro says, “you sound just like him.”

Pidge laughs a little, and there he is, the Pidge Shiro’s gotten to know, gotten used to, a little shaken but not about to fall apart any second. Shiro almost reassures him more, almost throws him a few platitudes about how tough Matt is, how they have to keep hoping, stay optimistic, chin up; it's obviously not what Pidge needs right now. Pidge seems to do better with stark truths, just the reality of the situation and the odds, and that Shiro can give him.

"If you want to sleep, you can stay here," Shiro says, instead. "Then I'll be close if you need to accuse me of any more murders."

"You don't mind?"

"Wouldn't offer if I did. I know how much easier it can be to have someone in the room."

"Okay," Pidge says. "Thanks."

"Anytime." Shiro gets up and leans down to get the extra bedding so he can lay it out on the floor; Pidge is frozen half under the covers and frowning once Shiro’s settled down in his makeshift bed.

"I can take the floor," he says. 

"Too late," Shiro says, and watches Pidge until he rolls his eyes, gives in, and slides the rest of the way under the covers.

*

As far as Shiro can tell, it took Pidge all of ten minutes to turn his room in the Castle into some kind of hybrid garbage dump and workshop, so he’s a little surprised when the door slides open to a room nearly as clean as his own. For a second he thinks he has the wrong room, but before he can turn back to the hall and double-check Pidge pops his head out from the closet.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Mind if I come in?”

“Only if you’re here to talk me out of leaving,” Pidge says, and ducks back into the closet without waiting to see whether he stays or goes. It’s a promise Shiro can mostly make, so he steps in and sits down on the neatly-made bed. It’s not long before Pidge comes back out to shove a few last things in the overstuffed bag on the floor.

“I understand you have to do this,” Shiro says. “Trust me, I do. I just think you should rethink going alone.”

“There wouldn’t be enough room in the pod, especially if one of them is injured and needs to lie down. And I can’t take Green, because I’m trying to take care of my family, not sabotage the fight against the Galra. I can’t take one of you for the same reason. It’ll be easier to replace one paladin than two.”

Shiro just nods. It’s sound logic; not that he expected any less, from Pidge but it’s at least good to be sure this isn’t some impulse decision because something upset him. Faced with the question of whether he’d actually do anything he needed to keep Pidge safe here, Shiro’s pretty sure there are a lot of lengths he wouldn’t go to - look at him, he’s barely willing to raise a mild objection - but he’ll never fucking forgive himself if anything happens, so he has to be sure, has to push.

“Last I knew you didn’t have any leads yet?”

“A few of the prisoners we freed helped with a list of places Matt and my dad might have been taken. If they’re not still there, at least I might be able to pick up a trail.” Pidge sits down next to Shiro, scoots back against the wall so Shiro needs to twist to look at him. Or turn around and pull his legs onto the bed, which is what he does.

“So you need to get in, check the prisoners, get whatever data you’d need to find out if Matt and your father were ever there, and get out?”

“Data first, then I only need to go after the prisoners if it’s the one facility they’re being held in. Two facilities, I guess, if they’ve been separated.”

“Out of?”

“Um,” Pidge says. “Fifteen or so?”

“So thirty total entrances and exits, maybe five hours total of time on-base stuck to a terminal, plus however long it takes to navigate through every camp. Double if you need to navigate to the data center and then to prisoner holding.” 

“More or less, yeah. I dug up some floor plans, from Rover’s databanks, so I’ll have a little advantage some places. If I can extend his range, I’m hoping I can just send him in for initial sweeps and data collection, and I’ll only have to land when we find them.”

“But you’ll have to be in the atmosphere for that? In an Altean pod?”

“A cloaked Altean pod,” Pidge says.

“It’s not a bad plan,” Shiro says. “Any experienced report brought this to me, I’d probably approve it.”

“I’m not asking for your approval,” Pidge says, voice firm, jaw set, chin tilted up a little. Shiro believes him, even knowing there’s a reason Pidge is telling him everything and it’s not because he wants criticism.

“I know,” Shiro says. “That was supposed to be a compliment.”

Pidge’s eyes narrow and Shiro almost laughs, not at him but at how completely he looks like Matt right this minute. How much like Matt he is in general, the same energy, the same push to always, always know everything no matter how many questions he has to ask, the same discomfort with letting anyone who isn’t on his level get a look in his head. No wonder this has been killing Pidge - how do you live your lives as the same person and survive this kind of separation?

“Can I tell you what I’d do, given the same parameters?”

“I guess,” Pidge says.

“Smaller’s better for infiltration, but I like to use as many of the resources at my disposal as possible. More ins and outs, so more chances to get caught, but better odds of having someone at your back when that happens. I wouldn’t use a couple lions, I’d take us all. Driving them back planet by planet is solid, and it’s working, but a full frontal assault on their main source of cheap supply and advancement might make them pull back a little, focus on the home front. You bring Green in cloaked, you and Rover - maybe Keith, too, he’s good at this - do your thing, with the benefit of the rest of us distracting them from the front. Then you have backup if you need an extraction, and we have the option of forming Voltron and getting out if things get hairy.”

“You don’t think they’ll maybe have all that cheap labor working on weapons we haven’t seen yet? We’re usually a step behind, you think we’ll come out okay if it’s ten steps instead?” asks Pidge. “Or they won’t start rounding up humans once they know it’s us and turn it into a hostage situation? Or just kill them?”

“Good questions,” Shiro says. “I’m not saying it’s a perfect plan, I’m saying that’s what I’d do given all the intel we have and all the unknowns and only myself to plan with.”

“Okay?”

Shiro sighs, not sure if Pidge is being deliberately obtuse or if this is just one of those places where he’s been a soldier too long and Pidge hasn’t really been one at all and they can’t quite meet in the middle. 

“I’m saying, you do what you have to do. I’m not going to talk you out of going alone, or tell you you’re wrong or doomed to fail, or sneak on the pod before you go because I don’t think you can do it. But you immediately came up with questions I hadn’t bothered with, and if we’d done it my way we would’ve hit those in the field and had to make some real quick, high-pressure decisions, and that’s when you make the calls you lose sleep over the rest of your life.”

“Okay,” Pidge says. “What haven’t I thought of?”

“You miss a security camera and someone sees you, how long do you think before they figure out you’re probably there for the human who looks exactly like you and the one he came in with? There’s a thousand ways they can use that against you, if they still have both in custody. I can guess what you’d do if your choice was lead them to us and the lions or give up Matt and the Commander, but what if you can only save one of them? Or one is injured and if you carry him out you’ll get caught and you’ll all die? Maybe you’d rather die than leave Matt to his fate in a prison cell, but what if your dad was still out there and if you died that’s the end of your search?”

“You’d - “

“I would,” he says. “I promise I would. But you die at some remote prison camp, and they don’t figure out it’s you and start gloating at the rest of us, how long before we find out? Because that’s how long the trail has to go cold, or for prisoners to be moved around or disposed of. And what if you don’t get recognized, but your pod does? It’s not hard to work back to Voltron from there, and then you’re in the same boat I would have had us in, any humans between us and the Galra turned into hostages? How many could you give up to get out of there and keep going?”

Pidge lets out a long, deep breath, looking down at his lap. Shiro almost, almost apologizes, but he has to do this. If Pidge is going to go out on his own in the middle of a war he has to know all the things he’s been protected from so far. Shiro’s under no illusion he’s going to shock Pidge into staying, that there’s nothing any of them can do, and there’s so much - Pidge is going to die in a Galra prison camp or a shuttle pod gone way farther afield than it should and they might never know. Shiro’ll never know which thing he forgot to make sure Pidge knew was the thing that sunk him.

“I have to,” he says, manages to meet Shiro’s eyes so Shiro can see just how serious he is. Enough to make Shiro almost believe he’ll show up a month from now, none the worse for wear and his family in tow. Almost. 

“I know,” Shiro says, again. “Be careful.”

Don’t die. Don’t get bad news and get reckless. Bring them back. Bring yourself back. Don’t let me fail you, too. Don’t go.

“Yeah,” Pidge says. “Um. We should - everyone’s waiting in the hangar.”

“I’ll get out of your hair, then,” Shiro says. “I - if you think of anything before you get down there, ask, okay? We can spare anything you need.”

“Thanks, Shiro,” Pidge says, soft and sincere, and Shiro gets out of there before he actually starts begging. 

*

Shiro’s exhausted, the excruciating bone-deep kind of exhaustion that only comes from being tied up and helpless with nothing to do but let his mind race, zip through all the things he’s failing to prevent right then, failing to help with, all the people he can’t protect and all the things that could happen to them. On Earth he might slip into an uncomfortably hot bath, focus on the mild pain while his muscles loosen and relax, let the heat sap all his strength so it’s a struggle just to get out of the tub and into bed to pass out for however long his body will let him. 

A sonic shower won’t give him quite the same result, so Shiro skips right to the collapsing in bed part, vest and pants kicked off but it’s too hard to change out the tight shirt for a looser one, to pull pajamas up over his boxer briefs. Everything’s too hard. Especially sleeping. 

Based on Shiro’s growing understanding of Altean time and ability to read their numbers, it looks like it’s maybe nine or ten in the morning, but when everything was said and done and the invaders driven out, Allura went in and manually changed the light cycle so everyone could get some sleep after a long night so the Castle’s dark like it’s the middle of the night. Maybe that’s why Shiro can’t sleep.

There’s a knock on the door, and a little green light flashes beneath the clock on the small, dim terminal. Pidge.

Shiro manages to roll out of bed and make it to the door with only a little stumbling, leg muscles drawn up tight and unhappy. He should stretch them out, should have hours ago. But that can be a problem for future Shiro; present Shiro pretty much only cares about opening the door and drawing Pidge into a tight hug as soon as he can.

“Oof,” Pidge says.

“Thank you,” Shiro says, not enough to cover it, at all, and he was just doing his duty, but - he looked like he expected it, dangling in the air from Sendak’s giant fist, looked like he knew he might end up dead for trying to save them, and Shiro can’t stop thinking about that face, can’t think straight while it’s stuck in his head. “I didn’t - you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Pidge says, muffled a little in his stomach. He squirms a little until Shiro loosens his hold, lets Pidge push back a little so he can look up. “You?”

“Maybe not,” Shiro says, a little sheepish. “I was worried.”

“You’re always worried,” Pidge says, settles back in against him.

Pidge knows what he’s thinking, which is good because if he says it out loud it’ll be too much, drown them both; _Sir, I let the Galra get the better of me and I was handcuffed and useless when they killed your kid_ is too heavy inside his own head, but it’s safer there.

“You should get some sleep,” he says, instead. “We’ll get you on your way once we’ve all had some rest.”

“I’m not going,” Pidge says. “Come on.”

“I meant what I said, before. I won’t stop you. Or let anyone else stop you. If it’s what you need - “

“It’s not,” Pidge says. “I wasn’t - it’s not.”

“Thank fuck,” Shiro says, squeezes Pidge so tight he squeaks a little bit. Whoops.

“Very supportive,” Pidge says, but he’s laughing, and holding Shiro just as tight. 

*

Usually when Shiro can't find Pidge, he's hiding somewhere in the lab, hunched over in a corner or under a table with his laptop so no one will bother him, but the lights are off and there's no telltale glow from the floor. It's entirely possible he's sleeping in there, so Shiro doesn’t bother turning the light on or stepping inside to look. Falling asleep in odd places would be weird for Pidge, though, especially now that he’s getting a full night’s sleep sometimes and doesn’t just shut off from exhaustion, so Shiro keeps looking. Pidge turns out to be in the training deck, running the gladiator on what has to be level four or five instead of his usual one or two. Shiro watches for a while, Pidge using his bayard again and again to jump out of the gladiator’s path at the last second, dropping to electrocute the gladiator from above, and trying to catch himself with the bayard before he hits the floor. The last part isn't going so well.

Anyone else Shiro might leave alone, but Pidge has the same face Keith gets sometimes, furious and frustrated and determined, the face that usually comes before a training accident, and with Keith he might keep watching and let it happen, but as far as Shiro can tell fucking up is more likely to make Pidge just throw in the towel, and it’d be a shame now that he’s apparently - finally - interested in improving his hand-to-hand. Just in the time it takes Shiro to change and open the door, auto-pausing the gladiator, Pidge has failed to catch himself enough times he’s started limping a little.

"Mind if I join?"

"If you'll help me figure this out?"

"Yeah, of course."

Pidge shakes his hair out, sweat flying everywhere, and takes a deep breath.

"I'm working on my reaction time," he says. "I'm getting better about hesitating, but I'm not fast enough."

"Okay," Shiro says. "Show me."

Pidge turns the gladiator back on, level five, and Shiro steps back out of the way, arm at the ready in case the gladiator gets confused and comes for him. Pidge does what he's been doing, letting the gladiator rush him, grappling out of the way at the last second, then trying to use his bayard for both attacking the gladiator and catching himself. Shiro watches him like a trainer this time, his stance while he waits, his control of his weapon, the careful way he times his jump, how he holds himself when he drops for the attack, and the fumbling when he tries to catch himself. He watches three or four times, ignores his urge to call for a stop every time Pidge hits the ground and winces, only calls for a pause when he thinks he's caught all the places Pidge needs improvement.

"You're kind of terrifying when you just drop out of the sky screaming," he says, and Pidge smiles at him, just a little, breathing hard and brow still furrowed in frustration. "Have you practiced falling and catching yourself without any of the extras?"

"I get nervous about hitting the ground," he says. "It's easier when there's other stuff to focus on."

"Fair enough. But you have to, or you'll never do this any faster." Pidge starts to protest, and Shiro holds up his hand. "You'll get faster than you are right now, sure. But with something like this you need to have every step down to a science on its own before you combine them. Your grip on your bayard changes when you attack, you need to know exactly where to shift back to when it's time to go up again. Take a couple days and do nothing but fall and catch yourself until it feels as natural as grappling up, which I know you can do in your sleep."

Pidge nods and starts to cross towards him, limping worse than ever. Shiro frowns.

"And put some mats down next time. If you want to practice taking the impact I can help you with that, but we usually don't start with falling from the ceiling to the bare floor."

"Cowards."

Shiro laughs, but the limp is worrying him. "Is it hip, knee, or ankle?"

"Hip."

"Sharp, or bruisey?"

"Bruisey, I guess. It's not too bad, just kind of tight. Well, it was kind of tight, now it’s _really_ tight."

Shiro nods and reaches for him, rests his Galra hand on Pidge's hip. "Right here?"

"Uh, yeah?"

Pidge jumps a little when Shiro's hand starts vibrating and goes cold, cheeks going a little pink under the flush of exertion that was already there. Right, Pidge doesn't usually train to the point of injury, wouldn't know to expect the way Shiro gets kind of handsy when it’s something he can fix.

"Sorry," Shiro says. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Pidge says, more like a sigh than anything. He leans forward a little, braces his hands on Shiro's chest. He should be sitting down, Shiro should have gotten him somewhere comfortable first, but he's okay admitting he gets a little weird about it when Pidge gets hurt. "But I can just go to Allura, if you had training you were gonna do."

Shiro shakes his head. "I was just down here looking for you, actually, I wanted to see if you were doing okay."

"With my training?"

"With Rover dying," Shiro says. "There’s been so much going on we haven’t talked about it, but I know he was important to you."

"He was," Pidge says. "It's good to know just how advanced the drones are, though, that was a lot of decisions something that simple shouldn't have been able to make."

There's more give under Shiro's Galra hand now, the swelling starting to go down; Shiro cools it down a little more, gets his hand going a little faster, digs his fingers in a little harder, and Pidge winces before his whole face just relaxes completely.

"So you're taking it well."

"No," Pidge says. "It sucks. All his lights just went out, and he was gone, it was awful. I keep seeing it when I close my eyes. He saved my life, and then he was just - gone."

"I'm sorry," Shiro says. 

"It's stupid, with everything else going on," he says. "I just - I liked having him around."

"It's not stupid," Shiro says. "Don't try to make yourself not feel things, that never goes well."

The door slides open, then, to Keith awkwardly clearing his throat and giving Shiro the weirdest look. Or Pidge the weirdest look. The same kind of look he gets from Keith - from everyone, come to think of it - when he picks Pidge up over his shoulder and carries him to the table so he can't skip another meal, or when he follows Pidge out of his room in the morning, or when he let Pidge in late one night while Lance's door was open across the hall, or right now when he's leaning in close with his hands on Pidge's hips and Pidge's on his chest and oh my God the entire ship thinks he's a pervert.

Shiro is a gentleman, so he doesn't immediately jump away from Pidge and let him fall on his face.

"I can come back," Keith says. Shiro shakes his head, a little harder than is probably necessary, and lets his hand wind down to stillness.

"We're done," he says. "Pidge just hurt himself. Better?"

"Yeah," Pidge says, a little soft and dreamy. Keith smirks; Shiro's going to kill him if he makes Pidge feel weird about needing a little attention. "Thanks."

"You should go see Allura anyway," Shiro says, "get some of that ointment, and a hot pack, or you’ll just tighten right back up."

Pidge, already halfway to the door, waves in acknowledgment and bumps his shoulder into Keith on his way out. Keith's still making that face, but he doesn't say anything. Which is probably a bad sign, Keith never hesitates to give Shiro a bunch of shit when he thinks Shiro deserves it.

"You wanna stick around?" Keith asks. "I'd rather fight you than the robot."

"Say that again when we're finished," Shiro says, raises his arm and lunges at Keith and lets the next hour of brutal sparring blank everything else out.

*

"Remember you asked me to tell you if I wanted you to stop calling me ‘he’?" Pidge asks, almost before Shiro’s made it all the way back into the room.

"Yeah." Shiro's a mess from his early morning training, definitely only came back for a shower, not to be hit with the full force of a Pidge who's been awake a full ten minutes and is all charged up on nerves and a good night’s sleep. "Ready to tell the others, stop being Pidge?"

"Not - no," Pidge says. "Yes? Kind of."

"Uh," Shiro says. "Okay?"

Pidge sighs and flops back against the pillows. 

"Sorry."

"It's okay," Shiro says; Pidge can hear a little bit of a laugh in his voice, can see the smile that goes with it. Handsome. Ugh. "Take your time."

"I don't think I'm Katie anymore," Pidge says, trying to pick words carefully so Shiro doesn't get worried. No _Katie's no one anymore, she’s nothing_ , even if that's how Pidge has been thinking about it, kind of. Katie stopped existing the minute Pidge enrolled in the Garrison, even if Pidge hadn’t realized it yet. "I'm not sure I ever will be?"

"You don't have to be," Shiro says. “But if you ever think you might be more comfortable being Katie again, you can be, even if right now you think she’s gone forever.”

"Okay," Pidge says. "But what I mean is - I'm still going to be Pidge. I - I do want to tell them, I think. Allura was - Allura thinks I'm keeping secrets, I'm pretty sure. And it's my secret to keep, but we need to trust each other."

"We can trust each other and still have privacy - "

"You're the one who got mad at me when I didn't want everyone digging through my head."

"I'm sorry," Shiro says. "I guess I haven't apologized for that yet. We shouldn't have tried that, I’m sorry I let it get that far. And I mean it, Pidge, you get to have your privacy and if Allura needs you to give it up to trust you fully that's on her. I can talk to her, if you want."

"No," Pidge says, "that's okay. I just meant - I do want to tell them, because I want to, not because I have to. Promise. I just can't say 'I'm not a boy, not Pidge, I'm a girl named Katie' because that's not true, either."

"Okay," Shiro says. "Sit up for a second, please?"

Pidge does, almost automatically, already so in the habit of doing what Shiro says.

"You're not telling anyone else, right now," Shiro says. "Tell me. No big reveal, I already know, just the part that comes after. What should I be calling you?"

"Um," Pidge says; Shiro's eyes are pretty intense. He probably gets that a lot. "They, I think. Right now."

Shiro smiles. "Okay. So I'll keep calling you Pidge, and I'll start using they, and whenever you want to tell everyone I'll be right there already knowing what comes after the first part. And if all you can handle is the first part, I can take care of the pronoun lesson."

"I - " Pidge says, bites their lip a little, tries to keep making eye contact but Shiro's just so stupid and warm and understanding and Pidge is blushing. "Yeah. Thanks."

"No problem," Shiro says, stands up, ruffles their hair, and finally escapes to take his shower, leaving Pidge alone to practice, for the thousandth time, what they’re going to say to everyone else.

*

Pidge spends a lot of time on the floor, these days. It probably means something, the kind of something that would make their mom frown and suggest for the thousandth time they talk to someone in the months after Dad and Matt disappeared, but Pidge is in space and they don't have to go to a therapist if they don't want to. 

It's not like anything's wrong, really, it's just - there were the bad months, when everything felt like walking through fog and they might have just wasted away, along with their mom, if not for all the Garrison husbands and wives and soldiers themselves flooding them with casseroles, and there were the dangerous months, when Pidge sometimes thought they might like if there were consequences, if they weren't just Sam Holt's grief-crazy little girl to be pitied, if they were as afraid of Pidge and what they could do as Pidge knew they should be, except for what it would have done to Mom, and then they were enrolled at the Garrison, and then flung into space and drafted into a war, and there hasn't been a lot of time with nothing to do. Maybe they've just forgotten how to handle downtime, how to tell the difference between relaxing and a cry for help.

There are calibrations running, and code compiling, and Pidge already stared at the little information they have about where Matt and Dad might have ended up for an hour without coming up with any other way to approach it, and the floor is nice and cool.

The lab door slides open, and closed, and whoever it is walks quietly enough Pidge doesn't notice they've been spotted until there's a pair of boots next to their face under the table. The boots take a couple steps back, and then Shiro's face is there instead.

"Hello," he says.

"Hi."

"Working on something important?"

"Oh, yeah," Pidge says. "You know you can put these terminals anywhere? I stuck one under the table so I could nap while I work."

"You say that like it's not something you'd do," he says. "Mind if I sit?"

Pidge shakes their head and Shiro's face disappears, replaced by his boots and then his thighs and then the rest of him, hunched over because he's too tall even sitting on the floor to see under the table well.

"I didn't have anything to do," Pidge says, "so I came down here."

"Sure," Shiro says, like that's the most logical thing in the world. "Everything okay?"

"That's a stupid question."

Shiro rolls his eyes, but he's smiling, that same smile he gets when he's talking about Dad or Matt, or when Keith's doing anything other than being sulky, or, more and more often, when he's talking to Pidge. It's a good smile, no wonder Dad used to make big pronouncements about following that boy into Hell, or whatever.

"Just checking."

"Nothing’s wrong" they say. "Other than the usual. I just don't really feel like doing anything."

"That's not like you."

"I guess."

"Okay," Shiro says, like that was an explanation. "I just wanted to make sure you weren't having a crisis, I'll leave you alone."

"You don't have to keep checking up on me," Pidge says, petulant, like Shiro being in the same room doesn't almost always feel better than being alone, like there are times Pidge feels less like it's them against the whole world - whole universe - other than when Shiro looks at them, and sees, and asks. 

"I know," Shiro says. "I was actually looking for Hunk."

Oh. "He went to get snacks like an hour ago. I assume he either got pulled away to fix something or he came up with some complicated idea and there won't be snacks for another two hours."

“Thanks,” Shiro says, kicks under the table to nudge Pidge’s arm with his foot, and then his footsteps recede, and the door opens and closes behind him, and Pidge is left to their solitude.

*

Like always, Shiro's awake before the nightmare lets go of him; he can see the room, the rough carpet and the under-bed drawers and a sheet that's come untucked trailing down to the floor, and he recognizes it's his room at the Castle, safe place, place that doesn't show up in these memories because he wasn't here until after. He knows it, feels too solid and real, feels the twinge in his back from sleeping on the floor but the part of his brain that processes all that so it can tell the rest he's awake now, it's over, apparently isn't working. It smells like blood, heavy in the air and weirdly sweet from the sheer variety of species bleeding out, he can feel it thick and tacky on his hands, both hands, up to his elbows, higher, vaguely remembers plunging a knife into his last opponent’s belly and pushing in all the way up to his shoulder. His stomach aches and his legs burn like he's been running too long, fighting too hard. He can't breathe, he can't breathe he can't he can't -

"Shiro?"

Shiro manages, barely, to roll over on his back, and when he does he can see Pidge leaning over the edge of the bed, eyes impossibly big without their glasses to hide them. He should - Pidge doesn't need this, he shouldn't - he just has to tell him _I'm okay_ but he can't past the crushing pressure in his chest.

"Shiro, you're safe, you're in the Castle. It’s just me, I’m not going to hurt you but I’m gonna come closer, okay? Don’t talk, if it’s too hard, just shake your head if you don’t want it."

Shiro doesn't really know what's good or bad, how he'll react, doesn't know what he wants and certainly not what he needs, but he nods, and pushes himself up to a shaky sitting position, leaning back against the wall. Pidge approaches slowly, so slowly, climbs off the bed and crawls forward inch by inch, giving Shiro all the space he can until they're close, until they can kneel at Shiro's side and tentatively raise a hand like he’s going to rest it on Shiro’s chest.

"Okay?"

Shiro nods again, and Pidge’s hand over his heart is almost too much, hot like a brand, but he focuses on the warmth of Pidge next to him, on breathing slow and deep against the real pressure of Pidge's hand and not the imagined pressure trying to crush him from the inside. Pidge just kneels there, silent and unmoving, grounding Shiro until the fog in his head finally, finally starts to clear. His Galra hand is on top of Pidge's on his chest; he has no idea when he did that.

"Thanks," he says, low and hoarse. Was he screaming? He usually doesn't scream, but his throat is sore.

"Is there anything - what do you usually do after?"

"Push-ups," Shiro says, thunks his head back against the wall. "Crunches. Held a twenty-minute plank, once, let my mind wander too much and wound up back in it a little bit. A few rounds with the gladiator in the training deck, if I think I can handle the walk down."

"Okay," Pidge says. "That helps?"

"It keeps me awake, which is pretty much what I need. And the time gives me some distance so I can be mostly normal by the time everyone else wakes up."

"Okay. I can go back to my room, give you some space."

They start to move, and Shiro panics, a good quick sharp panic and not the prolonged attack he was just in danger of. He holds Pidge's hand down, can't let them move, can't let them go, but he forgot which arm he was using until Pidge gasps in pain.

"Shit, shit," Shiro says, yanks his stupid fucking cyborg hand away as fast as he can. Pidge shifts closer, leans against him, makes more contact before they pull their hand to their chest and rub it out a little. "Sorry, shit."

"Or I can stay."

"I don't think I can be alone right now. I don't - this wasn't even a really bad one, but I can’t - please don't go."

"Okay," Pidge says, casual as anything, like Shiro's just asked them to run a diagnostic instead of trying to break their hand and then begging them not to go somewhere they might feel safer. He’s never - he’s had people around before Kerberos, of course, to get him through other nightmares, but since then it’s been empty rooms and whatever he can manage on his own, and now that he’s got help again he can’t just let it go. "Can you stand? We can stay here, but the bed might be better."

"Maybe? Not right away, my legs kind of feel like jelly."

"Okay," Pidge says, for the thousandth time. They shift from kneeling to sitting, tug at Shiro's arm - the real one - until he lifts it so Pidge can lean against his side and he can rest his shaky hand on Pidge's shoulder. "This okay?"

"Yeah," Shiro says. "Thank you."

Pidge just nods and leans a little harder against Shiro, yawns so wide it makes Shiro think of the lions roaring, and rests their head on Shiro's shoulder. Shiro breathes in, hold, out, hold, focus on the real things, on Pidge's hair tickling his arm and the warm weight of them against Shiro's side, the roughness of carpet he can feel through his thin pajamas, the chilly air on his feet. In, and out, and Pidge definitely didn't shower after training because they kind of stink; in, and out, and the not quite comfortable not quite painful pressure of the wall against his shoulder blades; in, and out, and he definitely has the climate control set too low because the air's circulating hard enough Shiro can see it ruffle Pidge's hair, can feel it ruffle his own. In, and Pidge is breathing with him, matching his steady rhythm, maybe on purpose. Maybe not.

Pidge yawns again.

"Okay," Shiro says, "let's get you back in bed so you can sleep."

"Just me?"

"I can’t usually sleep after one of those," Shiro says.

"You gonna work out?"

He should. He should, it helps (even if it doesn’t _help_ -help), it's reliable, but he thinks about walking through empty hallways down to the empty training deck and even the idea gets him shaking a little. He thinks about steadying himself through hundreds of push-ups, working his heart rate back up when the slow, steady thump of it right now is so calming. Thinks about settling Pidge into bed and then listening too hard for their breathing the rest of the night, getting anxious every time his own panting gets too loud and he has to stop and make sure Pidge is alive.

"No."

"You gonna lie down?"

As worn out as he feels, it's probably his only option. "Yeah."

"Okay," Pidge says, ducks out from under his arm and stands up, holding out a hand to Shiro. "So do it in the bed, where your back won't hurt, and if you doze off I'll be right there so you'll know you're not alone as soon as you wake up. Otherwise I'm just gonna stay down here with you."

Shiro feels a little like he's in a trance, like Pidge got him calmed down so fast by weaving some kind of spell over him and now they're the one in control of Shiro's brain. Shiro can't really find a downside to Pidge being some kind of secret wizard if it means he can breathe, so he takes Pidge's hand and stands up.

The bed isn't all that small, but neither is Shiro, and trying to put distance between them doesn’t really do any good. As soon as he gives up and lets himself relax, roll back into the center a little, Pidge sits up.

"It helps when I touch you, right?" they ask.

"Yeah."

"Permission to spoon, sir?"

He couldn't possibly get any farther from keeping a respectful distance than that, but in the fog it's hard to remember why he was even trying, why he's been sleeping on the floor so much lately, what's so important about Pidge that hasn't been true of everyone else he's had to bunk with in his life.

"I'd like that," he says, and Pidge settles against his back, Pidge's warm, steadying hand back in its place on Shiro's chest. Shiro rests his hand over it, again, and this time tangles their fingers together, and when the sunrise lights wake him he doesn't even remember falling asleep.

Pidge, arm draped loosely over Shiro's waist, starts grumbling into the back of Shiro's neck, either cursing out the lights or being annoyed by something in their dreams. It's stupid cute, the grumbles and the way Pidge's toes are pressed against the backs of Shiro's knees because they're so short and the way they held on to Shiro all night, and Shiro kind of wants to just lie there and enjoy something nice, but his mouth tastes like shit and lying still makes him anxious so he slips out of bed to brush his teeth and wash his face.

His legs are shaky, head still foggy, but he almost feels like a functioning human once his mouth tastes like mint instead of bile and he's splashed himself with cold water, and that's so rare after one of those nights he's not sure what to do with it. Pidge is sitting up against the headboard when he comes back in the room, doing a pretty reasonable job of pretending they're not in danger of going back to sleep any minute.

"Hey," Pidge says; Shiro didn't know he was bracing himself for _are you okay_ and _do you need to talk_ and _maybe there are therapists in space_ until his shoulders drop all the tension they'd been holding at the simple greeting.

"Hey," Shiro says, and sits back on the bed like he doesn't have stuff he wants to get to, a schedule he clings to like it's the only thing keeping him from spinning out. "Thanks."

"No problem." Pidge stretches out, pushes their toes against Shiro's leg. "Does it happen a lot?"

"It was every night, for a while," Shiro says, as much as he's not sure he really actually wants to talk about this. "It hasn't been as bad lately."

"And I haven't been - you haven't, while I've - "

"Been sleeping? No, you're good. I wouldn’t want you punishing yourself for sleeping peacefully ten feet away even if you had missed a few."

"So not what you would do, then," they say, and smile, and poke Shiro with their toes a couple times. Shiro lifts a hand to squeeze their ankle, narrow and bony, and smiles back.

"Exactly."

"Did I - ugh," Pidge says, covers their face with their hands. "I was about to say 'did I do okay' but that's shitty. Are _you_ okay?"

Shiro shrugs. "I don't know if okay is the word, but I'm better. You did good, Pidge, thank you."

"Ugh," Pidge says again, and tips their head back against the wall. Shiro doesn't push, just pulls his legs up under him to get comfortable, scoots a little closer so Pidge doesn't have to stretch so far to push their toes into the meat of Shiro's thigh. He can have breakfast later, when everyone else does; he can go without an early workout once. The silence stretches out between them, long but not quite tense. The sort of quiet that makes Shiro want to pull out a book and actually relax for once. If he can ever hold on to that feeling for any length of time, maybe he’ll ask Allura to teach him to read Altean. 

"I don't like that you sleep on the floor," Pidge says, finally, pulls their hands away so they're not muffled anymore. "I have a perfectly good bed, and all I do is barge in on the few hours you get away from dealing with everyone else’s problems and ask things from you and take away your alone time and make you sleep on your floor where you probably aren't getting any real rest. Which is probably why you aren't having as many nightmares, so maybe that's okay, but I don't get to decide that. And now I'm like, well, I helped, that evens things out a little but that's just me looking for an excuse not to go back to sleeping in my own room and not bothering you."

"You done?" Shiro asks; when he raises an eyebrow at Pidge he gets kicked in the leg for his trouble. "I'm a grown man, Pidge, I can tell you to leave me alone if I want you to. Ask Lance, he's incapable of letting me sit still for five minutes without trying to get my attention. Hell, ask Keith, he’s almost more another part of me than a second person and I still can’t stand him sometimes. I like having you around, I like talking to you. If you stopped coming I might wind up at your door sometimes, now that I know you’re as likely to be up as I am."

"Definitely don't do that," Pidge says. "Not without a radiation suit or something equally protective."

"Well, then, don't stop coming around, unless you really want to. You're not a burden. And maybe I'm not having the nightmares as often because you always get me talking about good times, or you give me something to focus on that takes my head in a better direction for sleeping."

"Maybe," Pidge says. "It's still not fair to make you sleep on the floor, I know your back's bothering you."

"It's the gentlemanly thing to do," he says; Pidge kicks him pretty hard that time, which is...fair.

"You'd share a bed with any of the others, I bet."

"I've heard Hunk snore, and Keith kicks in his sleep. Hard," Shiro says, and squeezes Pidge's ankle again. "But you're right, I’ve been thinking the same thing. It…seemed important, at the time.”

“I’m always right.”

Shiro lets go of Pidge's legs to reach forward and grab their hands, tug a little until they gets the picture and sit up so Shiro can make eye contact. Very serious, solemn eye contact. So serious and solemn Pidge starts laughing and Shiro can't quite keep a straight face. 

"Pidge, you have a standing invitation to spend the night here whenever you want, unless I say no for some reason. And I don't want you to feel obligated to put up with the nightmares, but if you're up for it I'd like you to share the bed with me so you'll be close by if I need you. Deal?"

"Deal," Pidge says, still laughing a little, and grins up at Shiro, all wide and bright and eyes still too big without their glasses.

*

Pidge knows, obviously, that sleeping in Shiro’s bed every night - now with Shiro in it - is kind of weird. If nothing else, they know Shiro is weird about it, and if they were as bad at reading people as everyone tends to think when they first meet the geek who won’t stop talking about machines, that would be enough to signal something’s up. Or maybe Shiro isn’t weird about it, it’s probably normal for a twenty-something to worry when a teenager starts invading his personal space and kind of a little bit moves in with him. But it’s not normal that he has panic attacks and fits of hallucinatory rage, and it’s not normal that all of Pidge’s worst nightmares involve him somehow, so who even knows what’s weird. 

Well, mostly. The way Hunk’s been looking at them all afternoon, constant shifty-eyed glances when he thinks they’re not looking, that’s objectively weird.

"What?!"

Hunk looks genuinely caught-off guard; that might just be his face, or he might have actually thought he was being subtle. He’s probably the smartest person Pidge knows, but it's really, really hard to tell with him when he's just playing dumb.

"So," he says, like he's making conversation out of nowhere and hadn't just been yelled at, "you and Shiro, huh?"

"What about us?"

"Uh, so, obviously you don't have to talk about if you don't want to. I'm used to Lance who usually, like, holds me down and starts yelling details any time he hooks up. I won't pry."

"Pry about what?"

"Ah, point taken. Nothing at all, Pidge, nothing at all."

He winks, and Pidge just stares at him, unblinking, trying to figure out what he's even - _any time he hooks up_ \- oh.

"You think I'm dating Shiro? Or…hooking up?"

"Okay, I'm sorry I pushed. I won't bring it up again, I just - "

"No, idiot, I'm not trying to play dumb, I'm trying to figure out what you're _talking_ about. Why would you - we're not - we don't - where is this even coming from?"

Hunk closes his laptop, then, and sighs, and he's usually so, so good at not being patronizing and not constantly making Pidge aware how much younger they are, but he's not doing that so well right now.

"You really don't know?"

"No."

"Okay," Hunk says. "Wow, okay. It’s just - we've all seen you, y'know, in the morning. Three times I've had to stop Lance from giving Shiro a piece of his mind about how young you are, which, like, it's not like he has many pieces to spare. And I wanted to talk to you so I could make sure if I let him go I wouldn't be ruining something good for you. Even if it is kind of sketchy. Really sketchy. A lot sketchy."

"I - everyone?” That's not the most important part. But - wow.

"Sorry, man, if I'd known you didn't know I swear I would have figured out a better way to tell you. Like not telling you at all and making someone else do it."

"No, it's - you're probably the best person to talk about this with. Or least bad, I guess."

"We've all got pretty consistent wake-up times, with the Castle's artificial sunrises and stuff - "

"So of course after a couple weeks everyone's happened to be up and out at the right time to see me come out of the wrong room."

"I did consider congratulating you a couple times, I guess that would've been a good way to give you a heads-up. Maybe a high five would’ve set a better mood."

Pidge pushes their hands up under their glasses so they can cover their eyes, press their face hard into their hands so they can see fireworks and shut out the rest of the room. Shiro’s so worried all the time about how things look and the whole stupid ship is going to validate him and Pidge isn’t going to get to stick their face in real Shiro’s neck when they wake up after another visit from nightmare Shiro and they aren’t going to get to be there for him on bad nights, and - 

"Shit," Hunk says; Pidge can hear a few things being shoved around, the wheels of Hunk's chair sliding closer, and then there's a big, warm hand on the back of their neck. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Pidge says, muffled in their hands. "Just feeling kind of stupid. Do - God, does Shiro know?"

"I doubt it," Hunk says, squeezes the back of Pidge's neck. "He doesn't seem like he'd let people think you were sleeping with him when you're not?"

He wouldn’t, so he doesn’t know, so Pidge can’t relax about how he hasn’t freaked out yet. Pidge is going to have to tell him (ha ha, Hunk told me the _funniest_ thing today) and then gather up all their stuff and go back to sleeping in their own room. If they can sleep.

"Probably not," Pidge says, finally slides their hands away from their face. Their glasses are so smudged now it doesn't really make a difference. "We just talk."

"You really don't have to explain anything to me."

"I don't sleep well," Pidge says, ignores him. "I can't turn my brain off. And he doesn't really sleep either, and talking helps him remember, so we just talk until we feel like we can sleep."

"I usually do math," Hunk says. "Really basic, so it's super boring, and then I get so bored I fall asleep. Except when I get so bored I start thinking about more interesting things and rev myself all up again. Yours sounds nicer."

Pidge leans back, sits up straight again because they're almost as embarrassed about almost freaking out as they are about all the rest of it. Hunk gives their neck one last squeeze, and rolls back to his own workspace.

"It's pretty nice," they say. And it is, nice when Shiro throws an arm around them, nice when he smiles at them when they say something brilliant, nice when he tells them how well they're doing or checks on them - it's nice, it helps them both, it's not anything it doesn't need to be, and it’s not anything wrong.

"I can talk to everyone," Hunk says, "unless you'd hate that."

"Maybe just Lance," Pidge says. "So he doesn't go on whatever crusade he's planning."

"Or," Hunk says, "hear me out, I tell him it'd be a great idea to defend your honor and then we get to watch what happens when he tries to pick a fight with Shiro."

"Shiro wouldn't fight him."

"Yeah, but if we make sure _Keith's_ there..." Hunk spreads his arms to indicate all the terrible possibilities, and Pidge laughs.

"I'll think about it," they say. "Now, come on, this isn't going to calibrate itself."

*

Shiro's door just opens for Pidge now, like it's their own; he can still lock them out, of course, but he asked Pidge how to program the exception in a couple weeks ago and hasn't changed it since. And it's not like he ever turned them away before, when they had to knock, but it's...different, this way; Pidge is still getting used to it.

No wonder everyone thinks what they think. Even Keith still has to knock, they’re pretty sure, some of the time.

When the door slides open, Shiro's on the floor, doing one-handed push-ups with his Galra arm folded behind his back. He must've been at it a while, he's not usually this out of breath and sweaty when just doing his pre-bed calming routines. 

"Hey," he says, when Pidge has taken a few steps into the room and their feet - covered in his black lion slippers, because Pidge took the wrong pair a couple mornings ago and likes how cozy the too-big ones are - come into his field of vision. "Wanna sit on my back?"

"Are you gonna use two hands?"

Shiro huffs out a laugh, shakes his head. "That's cheating," he says.

"Then no," Pidge says, "you're too hard to balance on."

"Or you're just naturally unbalanced."

"Same difference," Pidge says, steps around him to climb on the bed and start arranging pillows and blankets to their liking. Shiro grins up at them, flushed and happy, and Pidge smiles back but it's probably not very convincing, since they can't stop thinking about what Hunk said, about what everyone thinks of them, of Shiro, of what's about to change. Shiro's smile falters a little but he goes back to his push-ups, counting under his breath and pushing up off the floor for the last ten. If Pidge were Lance they'd be getting on the floor as soon as Shiro stood up, taking it as a challenge and trying to catch up. Some day, maybe.

Shiro runs through a quick stretching routine, the same one he put in the conditioning program he wrote for them, except Pidge's legs don't go that high or that far apart and they're not remotely that graceful. They think maybe their form is good, though, looking at Shiro's; what would Hunk - or anyone - think if he saw Pidge sitting on the bed watching Shiro stretch so closely? Ugh.

"You okay?" Shiro asks, back to them, slipping his pajama top on over his undershirt. They'll both stink like sweat in the morning if he doesn't shower, but that feels like kind of a weird thing to complain about, at least out loud. "You seem distracted."

"I was talking to Hunk earlier," Pidge says. "He...said some stuff."

Shiro turns around, frowns down at them. "What kind of stuff?"

There's an edge creeping in to his voice that Pidge ignores, never sure how to deal with the flip in their stomach when Shiro gets protective, the little flash of guilt when they feel like they're getting him worked up over nothing.

"Nothing like that." Pidge says. “He thinks we're having sex."

Shiro freezes so completely for a second Pidge thinks time's stopped, the Castle's been hit with some shitty new Galra weapon and now they'll have to go hope not everyone got frozen so they won't have to deal with it alone. Only for a second, though, before Shiro shakes his head, tugs his shirt down over his hips, and turns around.

"He said that?"

"Not exactly," Pidge says. "But yeah."

Shiro sighs, rubs a hand over his face and looks up at the ceiling. "I thought that might be coming. Didn't think anyone would bring it to you, though."

"You knew?" Pidge tilts their head, studies him, the line of his clenched jaw, his closed eyes, furrowed brow, arms crossing and uncrossing over and over again. Pidge doesn't like not fully understanding things but they like that Shiro's okay with it, sometimes, that he's okay letting it show on his face and in his body language when he's working out the answer on the spot. Pidge has to second-guess every time they catch themself staring at him, now, think about who's around, who might see, what they might think, but they don't try to pretend they weren't when Shiro looks back down at them and frowns.

"I've done my share of walks of shame," he says, smiles a little. "Not that there's any shame in it. But I know the looks. I guess I should have said something, but I didn't want - I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I like that you come here, I like that you feel safe, but I'm - it would be so easy to make this weird."

He comes over to the bed and sits on the edge, leaving space between them like he always did at first. 

"Oh," Pidge says. "I didn't - I thought you might make me stop coming around."

"You can stop whenever you want," he says. "I like having you around, but I won't resent you, or give in to the panic attacks and have a full breakdown if you don't want to be here. But no, I won't turn you away when you need me just because it looks funny from the wrong angle."

Shiro scoots back on the bed a little, keeping space between them but shifting to sit back at the foot of the bed so he doesn't have to look over his shoulder to see them. He looks like he's relaxing, like he actually means he's not worried about it.

"I feel like it _should_ bother you," Pidge says, because their idiot mouth can't just let things look okay. "I know you care about how you look, as the leader, all the stuff you keep behind closed doors because you don't want it to change what anyone thinks when you start giving orders and need us to listen. Lance is apparently pretty much ready to call the space cops on you for being a predator, that can't - "

"I think we might be the space cops," Shiro says. "And no, that doesn't bother me."

"Really."

"Really. I don't - I'd be lying if I said I don't trust your judgment. More than my own, a lot of the time. I trust you, and I rely on you to look at a situation and assess it and give me the information I need to make the right call. But in some things - I don't like the idea of Hunk deferring to your judgment on this. If there's someone on the ship willing to say something's fishy no matter how happy you seem or how trustworthy I'm supposed to be, then yeah, I'm good with that. Hunk’s looking out for your happiness rather than your safety, and we both know Keith wouldn’t assume the worst of me, and Allura and Coran just aren’t ever going to stop misunderstanding human ages and courtship rituals all they want; if Lance is willing to be the one who sees something wrong and points it out, that’s good, that’s something I need."

"You wouldn't hurt me," Pidge says; petulant, maybe, but they know it all the way down to their bones, more sure of it than they have been of anything in their lives. 

"I wouldn't," Shiro says. "But I might."

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Pidge says, and that's definitely too petulant but the idea of Shiro hurting them is close, way too close, to the Shiro that only lives in their nightmares, and Pidge's stomach feels like a block of ice thinking about it, and they can tell right now they're going to wake up from something awful and have to wake Shiro up to make sure he's the real him. 

Shiro frowns a little, but just a little, and then his face softens, probably because he knows all of Pidge's standard shitty dreams pretty well by now. He nods, waits for Pidge to wriggle under the covers before standing up himself and sliding in next to them. Pidge grabs one of the extra blankets, the one that looks like sheepskin but ten times as soft, and once they're settled under it Shiro shifts into their space, no production about a blanket between them or keeping himself as far from them as possible before they inevitably roll together in their sleep. Just Shiro and his broad chest against Pidge's back, their head tucked under his chin, Galra arm heavy on their waist, just Shiro, and Pidge falls asleep quick and easy and, for a little while, peaceful.

*

"Pidge," Shiro barks, almost regrets not changing his tone when Pidge jumps out of their seat and scrambles to attention. "With me. The rest of you know what you need to be doing. Reconvene in the hangar in half a varga."

Shiro storms out of the room, Pidge hurrying to his side and keeping pace. Shiro doesn't see if any of the rest of them started moving to follow his orders; he doesn't fucking care. They’ll be ready, and if they aren’t he’ll just go rescue the princess by himself. 

"I don't have any physical trackers on Allura," they say, pulling up a screen on their gauntlet, three or four different radar displays all beeping at different rates. "But with what we know of their standard routes, and some data from the Galra finder algorithm, I can cross-reference - "

"You don't have to. She dropped her disguise when they caught up to her, only one place they'd take an Altean prisoner even if they didn't recognize her as the princess."

"Okay," Pidge says, and the display switches to something that looks like blueprints, or floor plans, maybe. "So with what we know of Zarkon's ship - "

"Hold on," Shiro says, stops walking. He led them completely the wrong way, which is great, because suddenly forgetting how to get around the ship is definitely something he needs right now. The pounding in his head speeds up, matches the racing of his heart, not doing enough not fast enough not good enough - wait. Pidge's room is right there, ten feet away. That's good, that'll be fine. The door slides open right away, since he's with Pidge, and he's so eager to get inside he almost trips over a pile of - somethings. Several dismantled computers and maybe a few literal rocks and at least three plates with varying amounts of goo drying on them. "Jesus, Pidge."

"I've warned you," they say. "So many times."

"There's knowing," Shiro says, picking his way across the floor so he can sit on the bed, "and there's seeing."

Pidge turns off the display and lets their arm fall to their side, frowns at Shiro.

"Why are we here?"

"I need a minute," Shiro says, "and I don't want to be alone.”

And Pidge won't tell him what he did wrong, or tell him all the things Allura did wrong and why he bears no responsibility at all, and if he can't talk Pidge won't push, and if all he can do is talk Pidge will just listen, let him get it all out. Shiro feels like he woke up mid-nightmare and he knows Pidge can handle that, handle him.

Pidge navigates the obstacle course of their floor like it isn't even there, comes to stand between Shiro's legs so it's the easiest thing in the world to wrap his arms around them and lean his head against their chest. Deep, steady breathing, drown out the desperation to fix it right now, now now now, with in, and out, and in, and out. Pidge's breathing syncs up with his after a minute; it always does. Shiro's still not sure if they're doing it on purpose or not. 

Allura's in a stupid, shitty, dangerous, awful position, and it's the kind of position Shiro should be in, the kind he always throws himself in so no one else has to take it. Being on this side of it is awful; it's a wonder everyone isn't this mad at Shiro all the time. Or maybe everyone is. Or maybe everyone else is better at this than he is because they've all had practice and he's protected himself every single time by throwing himself in harm's way instead of ever being the one who makes it out okay. 

Maybe a split second after realizing what Shiro had done, Matt had wanted to snap Shiro's neck for being so stupid, like Shiro did with - but maybe no one else is that ready to boil over all the time.

Pidge is humming a little, soft thoughtful little noises in their throat that Shiro can barely hear over the rush of blood in his head. Their arms are moving, one elbow resting on his shoulder.

"Are you doing calculations behind my head," Shiro says, not really a question. 

"Running a diagnostic," Pidge says. "You said half a varga. I'm here, though, this is just background."

They stop what they're doing long enough to run a hand over the short hair at the back of Shiro's head, petting him a few times before returning to their work. Shiro wants to ask, sometimes, who it is in Pidge's life who needs this kind of thing, where they learned how to handle these desperate near-meltdowns. Maybe their instincts are just that good, though; maybe Shiro's just another piece of tech they can look at for five minutes and understand fully. Nobody really sees him quite the way Pidge does; Shiro doesn't really know what to do with that.

"I'm sorry for falling apart in front of you," Shiro says. "I kind of do it a lot."

Pidge shrugs. "I don't need you to be the fearless leader, so it might as well be me."

"That's not - "

"I know," Pidge says, pets the back of his head again. "That's not the only reason I don't mind. It's okay, Shiro, don't overthink it."

Shiro just sighs and goes back to thinking about his breathing, because spiraling out thinking about all the things he takes from Pidge when they’re already an untrained teenager suddenly on the front lines of a war isn’t any better than spiraling out worrying about Allura. The thoughtful hums start up again, their arms moving behind him again, and Shiro zones out a little to the quiet rhythm, lets himself float on it until Pidge wraps their arms around his back and holds him like he's been holding them.

"All good," they say, lean into him a little for a good, real hug. "And we don't have a lot of intel to go on, but what there is has been uploaded to the lions for everyone. Anything you need to do? We've got about ten minutes."

"Nothing," Shiro says, except get his head on straight. No better way to do that than sitting here trying not to think, letting Pidge rock him a little just because they're always too wired to ever really stand still, and breathing in, and out, and in, and out.


	2. Chapter 2

Green locks on to them right away, as soon as they’ve broken the atmosphere, when they’re still so far away they’re barely specks on the screen even zoomed in. Pidge doesn’t need to see them in any detail, though; even with their lions nowhere in sight they’d recognize Keith and Shiro anywhere. Pidge pushes Green a little harder than usual, still a little off-kilter from just how lonely they got and how little time it took them to get there, a little desperate to hear their voices again.

"You've gotta come help," Keith says, as soon as they’re in range. "He's hurt, I can't get him up there myself."

"I can walk," Shiro says, a little distant like he’s trying to talk through his helmet without wearing it, but even if Pidge didn’t know never to listen to him assess his own wounds, Green barely takes any time to land and Pidge is halfway to the exit, collapsible stretcher in hand, before he can finish protesting. "Just - argh."

"Sit still," Keith says. "Pidge."

"I'm coming," Pidge says, standing in Green's mouth waiting for her to lower herself all the way to the ground. "It's that bad?"

"No," Shiro says.

"Yes," Keith says, at the same time. "Stop doing that."

"I'm not doing anything," Shiro says, coughs and gasps in pain. Keith is still rolling his eyes, brows and lips drawn tight with concern, when Pidge lands next to them. He always looks so _young_ when he's worried. Shiro's suit is torn, glowing scratch marks in his side and small bruises and scratches all over the rest of him, his face and jaw and showing through smaller tears. Pidge drops the stretcher and starts scanning.

"Can we just hurry, get him back to the healing pods?"

"I want to see if there's anything I can do to stabilize him, it'll just take a second."

Keith sighs, but doesn't argue anymore. Pidge can't blame him; Shiro's so pale, and they've both obviously been through a lot. Pidge flushes, guilt about how much time they wasted talking to caterpillars and bad sculptures rising like bile in their throat. All Pidge's scan really shows is that it's bad, and he needs to be in a healing pod ten minutes ago. More time wasted, nice work, Pidge.

Shiro winces when they ease him onto the stretcher, and then, because he's Shiro he smiles tightly up at Pidge when they lift him.

"I'm okay," he says, "really. How'd you find us?"

"Uh," Pidge says, "I built a beacon out of trash."

"Of course you did," he says, and coughs again, winces. “Nice work.”

Keith surges forward a little, enough Pidge almost trips trying to adjust their pace, but - they can't blame him. Green lowers a little ramp for them, one Pidge didn't even know she had, and scoops them up gently, raises them up as she stands so slowly Keith starts fidgeting again. Shiro closes his eyes; by the time Green's stopped moving, Pidge is pretty sure he's out. Hopefully just asleep.

"What happened to him?"

"Haggar," Keith says, "I think. Would Green let me fly her? I'm faster."

"The Castle's just outside the atmosphere, it won't make any difference." Pidge says, pulls off their gauntlet and hands it to him. "Here. If you need something to do, keep running the scanner over the wound. If we get enough data before we reach them, Allura can adjust the pod and have it ready."

Keith nods; Pidge doesn't really know how to do this part, the it's-going-to-be-okay part, so instead of saying anything else they just hurry back to the cockpit and take off as quickly as they safely can. If things were reversed, if it were Keith who got hurt, Shiro might bring the stretcher all the way back to the cockpit so he could sit with both of them, so Pidge could keep an eye on Keith and not start thinking about what might happen when they're not looking. But Keith doesn't want to move him too far into the lion because that's just longer between him and the healing pod, and he's right, so Pidge just sits alone and bites their lip and watches the Castle loom closer and closer until the hangar opens and they're home again.

*

Pidge blinks awake slowly, fuzzy awareness of too much space, too bright, hard surface behind their head, an ache in their neck, mild cramps in their legs. Laptop on their lap. The lights are on full daylight, so Shiro must have been moving around quietly enough not to wake them when he came back for his shower. Or, no, this isn't Shiro's bedroom, it's - right. Pidge was sitting with Shiro's healing pod, trying to get some work done. Apparently a huge battle followed by a day or so trapped alone in a space dump followed by the rush of finding Keith and Shiro and keeping Shiro alive exhausted them. 

"Oh, you're awake," Keith says, coming up on the other side of Shiro's pod with a big bowl of popcorn (or whatever Hunk keeps trying to explain it actually is) and a couple bottles of something dark and fizzy. "Good timing."

Pidge sets their laptop aside and stretches their legs out, groaning a little as the muscles protest. Keith folds himself down next to them, hands them a bottle.

"How long was I asleep?"

"Only an hour. Hour and a half, maybe."

They twist the caps off their sodas - Pidge vaguely recognizes the label, but can't remember if it's the root beer that tastes exactly like it came from Earth or the syrupy, licorice-y one - and when Keith tips his bottle Pidge clinks theirs against his. It's the licorice one, and Pidge kind of hates the flavor but that and the heavy fizz are doing a good job chasing away the last of the sleep.

"So," Keith says, leans back against Shiro's pod and looks out across the room instead of at Pidge. "About earlier."

Maybe Keith knows how long Pidge spent fucking around instead of trying to get out and find the others; maybe he knows they were goofing off making animal friends and having tea parties while he and Shiro were fighting to survive. That Pidge could have gotten there earlier, so much earlier, if they'd focused. Pidge isn't sure if Allura or Coran noticed they took a few extra minutes to save some of the sculptures, for no good reason other than feeling weird leaving things they'd named after their friends behind, but if they did Keith might know that, too. 

"I didn't, uh, thank you," he says, "for finding us."

"Oh," Pidge says. "You don't - "

"Shut up," Keith says. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, I guess."

Keith nods, still not looking anywhere near Pidge, and takes a big swig of his soda. 

"Everyone loves Shiro," he says. "But hardly anyone _knows_ Shiro. I gotta look out for him."

Pidge wants to argue, not that Shiro doesn't need that (he absolutely does) but that Pidge isn't someone Keith needs to protect him from, that scanning him to make sure he's safe to move or not wanting to take the time to convince Green to let Keith fly her wasn't exactly hostile. It's not the point, though, and Keith's been through so much.

"I know," they say, instead, and finally Keith turns to look at them.

"I don't know what's up with you two," he says. "And I don't care. But obviously he's let you in really close, and it's been good for him, and I know you take care of him. It just takes me a while to get from knowing to _knowing_ , you know?"

"I get it," Pidge says, and Keith smiles at them, small and lopsided and like nothing they've seen from Keith before. A little forced, maybe, but this is the first time Pidge has actually seen him drop the cool loner thing for more than a few seconds, for something other than panic or desperation (or for Shiro when he thinks no one’s looking), of course it sits weird on his face.

"It's almost time for Allura to come check on him," Keith says. "Want to take this somewhere else so we don't get the _Shiro would want you to take care of yourselves_ speech again?"

"Hunk finally figured out how to hook the Gameflux up," Pidge says.

"Perfect," Keith says. "Let's go."

When they come up for air again, eyes heavy and hands cramping and final boss reduced to pixelated ash, the Castle is dark and silent. They split off in the hallway, Keith to his own room and Pidge to Shiro's, and when Pidge gathers up a pillow and a couple blankets and returns to Shiro's pod, Keith is already there, already asleep. Pidge settles down on the other side, presses their forehead against the cool glass for a few seconds, and joins him.

*

There's a massive, yawning emptiness at the core of Shiro; he didn't realize it until he was watching Keith spit fire at Allura like he was ten thousand miles away, while his brain just absorbed all the shitty things she'd said because none of it sparked any reaction at all. Shiro is angry, he knows, in a distant, detached kind of way, furious and confused and afraid and deeply, desperately sad, but he can't actually feel any of it. Keith yells, and maybe somewhere in the distance that feels good, so good, the way it does every time Keith's spun around and come to Shiro's defense, like he’s as convinced as he’s ever been it’s just Shiro and Keith against the world. But Shiro's tired, so tired all of a sudden he thinks he might fall over, and he pushes past them to leave them to their argument and go to bed.

Pidge is already there, lying down on the wall side - their side - of the bed, reading something on a datapad. They’re propped up on too many pillows, more than were here last night, like they collected the spare from Shiro's room and from their own and maybe even from a few others, and Shiro's pretty sure there are more blankets at the foot of the bed than when he got up this morning. Pidge built him a nest; Shiro is too exhausted to think about it. He's struck with the urge to ask Pidge to leave, to spend one night in their own room, to give Shiro space to be as numb and useless as he wants, but he has no idea what he'll do if he wakes up in the middle of the night to find himself alone. He doesn't really want to find out.

At least Pidge doesn't push, just keeps reading while Shiro ducks into the bathroom to change and brush his teeth and was his face and take a couple deep breaths. They're still quiet when Shiro tells the lights to dim even lower and slides into bed, quiet until Shiro sighs and rolls over and plants his face on Pidge's stomach to feel it rise and fall make sure they’re alive. 

Even then he doesn't talk, just grunts a little at the impact. The datapad disappears somewhere, and Pidge rests one hand on his shoulder and pets Shiro’s hair with the other, and it would probably feel nice if Shiro could feel anything at all. Shiro must be heavy, all the weight of himself and everything he's carrying, and Pidge so small and carrying so much of their own, but they don't complain. Never complains when Shiro needs them.

"Did he hurt you?" Shiro asks, eventually, when the urge to start crying feels like it might be getting too hard to resist. He's not ready to break all the way down in front of anyone right now, even Pidge. Especially Pidge, maybe, who handles it so well but shouldn’t have to.

"Just bruised my butt a little," they say. "If I'd known he wasn't here to kill us, it probably would have been fun."

Pidge would say so, that wild edge to his curiosity that, from only a little distance, isn't really distinguishable from Keith's adrenaline addiction. Better that than hurt, though; if Ulaz had hurt Pidge - hurt any of them - Shiro’d probably be angry with him along with everyone else, and Shiro owes him more than that. Owed.

"The thing you said," Shiro says, "you and Hunk, about how they could have planted false memories using my arm - "

"I'm sorry," Pidge says. "We owe you more trust than that."

Shiro shakes his head. "You're right. Not about this one, but - would I even be able to tell?"

"I don't know. We can do some scans as your memories come back, maybe get a baseline from stuff we know you remember correctly so we can see if there’s something different about fake memories, but we have no idea what the limits of their tech are. I might know more once I get a better look at the code from your arm, but I might not."

"I barely knew him," Shiro says, too tired and foggy-headed to really process the explanation. He can ask again later, if he doesn’t get too anxious about what they might find. Kind of a big if.

"I'm sorry," Pidge says again, and Shiro sighs.

"I want to go to sleep," he says, rolls his head and presses the words into the fabric of Pidge's pajamas. “And I don’t want to move.”

"Okay," Pidge says; he wraps his arms a little tighter around Shiro, holds on like he's as worried Shiro might just get so empty he'll come unmoored and float away into space as Shiro is, and quietly tells the lights to turn off.

*

Pidge is getting better, in general, at not getting so wrapped up in their work that they forget the outside world exists and leave themselves open to being snuck up on, but Shiro is a special case because he’s freaky quiet when he wants to be. At least they don’t jump this time when he comes up behind them.

“There you are,” he says, like it could possibly have been a surprise this is where Pidge came as soon as they got back and debriefed. The whole day was a lot, a little too much, and the lab is the most calming place on the whole ship.

“Here I am,” Pidge says; arms appear in their peripheral vision, one organic, one robotic, slowly and carefully setting three plant pots on the desk. They’re pretty big, but whatever’s planted has just barely sprouted, three tiny specks of green hiding in three big brown fields. Pidge raises an eyebrow and turns to face Shiro.

"They're the armory flowers," Shiro says. "Ryner wasn't sure if they'll work out here, but either way I thought you'd like them."

"Oh, wow," Pidge says, smiling so hard up at Shiro their face hurts a little. They're still buzzing, still high off that brief tangible connection to the entire universe, tingling in their fingers and toes like they could shoot lightning if they really wanted to. Pidge can still feel Shiro the way they did at that moment of perfect oneness, not his warmth or the solidity of his presence but all the molecules that make him Shiro vibrating in their own perfect rhythm Pidge can _feel_. They want to jump on him for a hug, feel how good this feels everywhere they'd be touching while he held them up and held them close, and they want to step back a few inches, put more space between them, because the shock of touching might blow them across the room. "Thank you."

"When Matt and the Commander used to talk about you," Shiro says, "which was pretty much all the time, they always sounded a little in awe of you, the things you were going to do, the person they knew you'd be. Like you weren't so much Katie, too young to come along, but Katie, too good to be wasted on something as dull as Kerberos."

"Dad's just braggy," Pidge says, overwhelmed by so much of Shiro's focus when they're already so open, already feeling everything multiplied back by the power still buzzing through them. Shiro's full attention is almost too much under normal circumstances; now Pidge feels like a river breaking its banks, threatening to flood the whole room, the whole Castle, with the rush of warmth in their stomach.

"Maybe," Shiro says, smiles at them, the force of him bubbling upwards, like it might lift Pidge off their feet and send them floating to the ceiling. "But I’m pretty sure I saw the person they were talking about today, and I can't believe I ever thought I had to worry about you."

"You can still worry about me," Pidge says, because they don't know how to say it’s important that he worries because Pidge has been missing all the people who worry about them for way, way too long, but everything inside them is magnified, too big to hold onto, and they don't know how to not say anything right now, either.

"Okay," Shiro says, and laughs; Pidge isn't sure which part is funny, but Shiro's laugh echoes all the way through them, and it's nice. "I just - I wanted to make sure you know I see how good you are."

"I do," Pidge says, not just because Shiro's really heavy-handed with the praise, for everyone, when he wants to be, but because somewhere deep in the core of them they can _feel_ how sure he is, how serious, and for the first time since getting back to the Castle they can feel the buzzing start to slow down, pull back a little; they feel like they can breathe without being conscious of how much of the universe they're taking into their lungs. "Thank you."

Shiro nods, and straightens up, wipes his hands together a couple times like maybe he has dirt on them. Like maybe if Pidge had reached for his hand they'd get to feel Shiro and the soil all at once, the steady grounding pulse of them both in rhythm with his heartbeat, with Pidge’s. Life and life and life.

"Don't stay up too late, okay?" 

Because he’ll be waiting for them, even if he isn’t waiting, reaching out for comfort with every atom of his being even if he isn’t reaching out for Pidge, specifically. But some of it would be for Pidge, and they’d be able to feel it, and _know_ it, and the idea of sliding into bed next to him this open, this aware, this overwhelmed - it’s terrifying.

"Yeah," Pidge says, watches him - feels him - cross the room and walk away. "Okay."

*

Taking an elbow to the sternum is a pretty shitty way to wake up, made shittier by the way Shiro's thrashing around and - whimpering, kind of? Not quite, but he's making high, urgent noises with every breath, obviously terrified. Okay. Okay. Pidge sits up, presses back a little against the wall so they're a smaller target, and reaches out to lay a hand on Shiro's shoulder. Touch usually works.

Not this time; as soon as Pidge makes contact Shiro's eyes snap open and he screams, almost more like a roar, and before Pidge can blink he's on the other side of the room, pushing back into the wall the same way Pidge is. Pidge takes a deep breath, another, makes sure their voice will come out as calm and even as Shiro needs before trying to talk.

"You're in the Castle," they say, the usual script. "You're safe. It's just me, Pidge, Katie, whatever, here with you. You were dreaming, but you're in your bedroom and you're free and you're safe."

Pidge moves forward, slowly as they can, big exaggerated movements so nothing will take Shiro by surprise. Most of these nights, especially the ones where they have to talk him down without touching him, he'll latch right on to her as soon as he's come out of it, clinging like a drowning man until the fog clears, and they want to be there within reach when he needs them.

It's a mistake; Shiro actually growls at them when they're about to step off the bed, growls and bares his teeth, all the tendons in his neck standing out, and goes from sitting to crouching, ready to lunge, in an instant. Pidge jumps a little, and Shiro snaps his teeth, eyes wild and distant. Slow movements. No surprises. Right. 

Pidge's chest hurts. 

"Okay," they say, backing away towards the center of the bed as slowly as they can. "I'll stay over here."

Slowly, so slowly, Shiro relaxes the tiniest bit, at least enough he doesn't look like he might lunge at the bed and tear Pidge's throat out if they make the wrong move. He wouldn't, even like this he wouldn't, they're more sure of that than anything, he wouldn't but he thinks he wants to.

Pidge sleeps with their gauntlet on, hardly ever takes it off, likes having access to the Castle networks and a shield and their communicator all the time, and Shiro keeps telling them they'll probably sleep better without it but joke's on him, now, because it means Pidge can make a call without taking half an hour to reach for the terminal on the wall.

"Keith? Are you awake? Keith? Keith, wake up."

"Pidge?" Keith's voice is thick and slow, muffled a little like maybe he didn’t bother lifting his head from his pillow. "What is it?"

"Shiro's having a panic attack, a really bad one, and he's not - nothing I do is working."

"I'll be right there," he says, all of a sudden bright and awake, like Shiro's name was a bucket of cold water. He doesn't say anything, but Pidge can hear rustling in the background, and a door sliding open and closed again. Pidge hears him knock at the door in real life, and then a split-second later through the communicator. 

"Don't come in right away," they say, hoping Keith's still listening. "He needs space."

"I know," Keith says, and when Pidge tells the door to open he's standing a few steps back in the hall, gauntlet dangling from one hand, dressed in just a t-shirt and boxer briefs and with his hair even more all over the place than usual.

"Shiro," he says, soft and gentle in a way Pidge hasn't ever really heard from him. "It's Keith. You're safe in your room in the Castle, Pidge and I are here if anything tries to come after you."

Shiro looks towards the door, the only indication he's heard Keith at all since there's no change to the tension in his shoulders or the tight clench of his fists or his breathing so harsh it sounds painful. Keith looks at him for a second, and then backs even farther away from the door, so Pidge can't see him anymore.

"You're not a prisoner," Keith says, "look. Door's open, you can go if you need to. We won’t stop you."

Pidge doesn't like that at all, Shiro wandering the Castle alone when he's like this. Whether or not he'd hurt anyone else (he wouldn't, he _wouldn't_ ), there's so many ways to hurt himself, or to break something, or wind up coming back up for air alone somewhere without anyone to hold on to. But they called Keith because if anyone knows, for sure, what Shiro needs it's probably him, and they're not going to argue with his methods.

No one moves for a long time. Shiro stares at the open doorway, practically vibrating with coiled-up tension; Keith stays where he is, out of sight; Pidge just sits, and watches, tangled up in their own blanket and the one Shiro was thrashing around under when he woke up. It's dead silent, except the hum of the ship working around them, and three different people’s anxious breathing. And finally, finally, Shiro lets go and slumps down like someone’s cut his strings.

"Yeah," Keith says, walking into the room with such small movements Pidge isn't sure he's even moving until all of a sudden he's kneeling down next to Shiro. "Good. You're good, Shiro, you're safe.”

Shiro reaches for him with his whole body, just tilting in Keith's direction until he finds the strength to get an arm up and reach for him for real. Keith looks a little surprised, but he shifts so he can sit next to Shiro, tucked under Shiro's organic arm while Shiro leans heavy against him. Pidge starts to feel like they're intruding, seeing something they shouldn't, too quiet and personal to share.

"Thanks," Shiro says, hoarse. "Did you say Pidge was here?"

Keith rolls his eyes, such a contrast to his careful, gentle smile. "Yeah, sitting right in front of you. They’ve been here the whole time."

Shiro looks up and ahead for the first time since Keith knocked, flushes a little; it's so good to see _Shiro_ in his eyes again, not just panic and rage, his gaze hits them like a physical blow. An elbow to the sternum. He smiles, small and exhausted and sheepish.

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," they say. "Want me to get you anything?"

"Come here?"

Pidge has to stop themself from lunging forward and probably setting him off again, so stupidly selfishly relieved they get to wrap their arms around him and make sure he's okay it's hard to control themself. Instead they get up, slowly, grab one of the heaviest blankets from the foot of the bed, slowly, and walk carefully across the room to sit next to him. As soon as they're down, Shiro yanks them into his lap, where they fit so neatly if they just curl up a little, and wraps his Galra arm tight around them. Keith grabs the blanket, just barely able to reach it around Pidge and Shiro, and does his best to wrap all three of them up in it.

Shiro's soft little sigh once they're both settled against him kind of makes Pidge want to cry, but they always end up wanting to cry on nights like this, and usually manage not to give in.

"How you doing?" Keith asks.

"Foggy." Shiro says. "We're…on the Castle?"

"Yep."

"And it was a dream, you didn't just - I wasn't back there."

"Right."

"Alright," Shiro says, hunching down a little so he can rest his head on Keith's shoulder. "I believe you."

Keith laughs a little, rests his head on top of Shiro's, and the three of them just sit there in the quiet for a while, long enough Shiro starts to doze against Keith, long enough sleep starts to creep in around the edges of Pidge’s brain.

"Wow," Keith says. "I've never seen him fall asleep after one of those."

"He usually does when I'm here," Pidge says, "but he said that was kind of new."

Keith looks at them for a second, unreadable; his eyes flick around the room, Shiro and the floor and the bed and the floor and the bed and Shiro and Pidge.

"Good," he says. "That's good. Can he go back to sleep if we interrupt him to get him in bed, or do you usually just let him sleep down here?"

"Bed," Pidge says; Keith nods, shrugs out of the blanket, out from under Shiro's arm to stand and wait for Pidge to do the same. Once they’re both on their feet he leans down and taps Shiro's cheek a little.

"Time for bed," he says; Shiro blinks hazy and confused at him, but he takes Keith's hands when they're offered, lets Keith pull him up and get him settled on the bed. Pidge tosses his blanket from earlier in the corner, covers him up with the sheet and the heavy blanket from the floor instead. 

"So," Keith says, "um. I'm just gonna worry about him all night, mind if I stay with him?"

"Oh," Pidge says, hadn't thought about it, has no idea how they'll handle seeing this and then just leaving him, not being able to check on him as easy as rolling over the rest of the night. But it's Keith. "No problem."

"Thanks," Keith says.

Pidge has barely moved away from the bed when Shiro's Galra arm shoots out and he grabs them by the wrist, holding them back. Right. They've tried this before.

"No," he says, eyes still closed so he doesn't have to see the brief flash of hurt on Keith's face before he shuts down back to neutral, the one Pidge is gonna forget they saw because Keith would hate if they didn’t. But Shiro pulls his other hand out from under the blanket, reaches across himself to get a hand on his wrist, too, all tangled up in himself to keep them both close. "There's room."

"Idiot," Keith says, pulls his arm out of Shiro's grip and slides in next to him. Shiro doesn't let go of Pidge, not until they've clambered over between him and the wall, until it gets in the way of Keith and Pidge arranging him neatly in the middle of the bed, Keith curled around his back and Pidge tucked in as close to his chest as they can get without breaking him open and crawling inside.

*

"So," Keith says, "you and Pidge."

Shiro knew this was coming, has been waiting for it for months now. Probably should have known it was coming today, if he'd been thinking about it. Keith's not usually a train-through-lunch person; if nothing else has stuck, Shiro's done a pretty good job hammering good nutrition into Keith's head. So maybe he should have noticed Keith kept pushing, maybe thought about why Keith might want to make sure they’d be eating alone. 

"Me and Pidge," Shiro says. "What about it?"

"Come on," Keith says. "You know what. You're sleeping together?"

"Jesus, Keith, no."

Keith waves his hand dismissively. "Not like that. I know you. But, literally, how long have they been sleeping in your bed?"

"A while," Shiro says, "Since we fought that gladiator robot, I guess, when I remembered what happened with Matt. And it's definitely not what you think it is."

"You're kind of defensive."

Shiro sighs, harsh and frustrated. If he's on the defensive it's because Keith put him there, ambushing him about fucking a teenager.

"Neither one of us sleeps well on our own, and having someone else in the room helps. Then I’m close when they have nightmares about their family, and they’re close when I have a panic attack. I started out sleeping on the floor, but that bothered them, and I didn't want them to think they had to choose between my comfort and their own problems."

"Makes sense," Keith says.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Shiro says. "So just ask what you're asking."

"That's what I mean," Keith says. "Defensive. That _is_ what I'm asking, I just wanted to know."

Shiro leans forward, scrubs his hands over his face, gives himself a second to take a couple breaths and remember who he's talking to.

"Hunk," he says, "told Pidge the whole crew thinks we're fucking, a while ago. And I know you saw us -"

"I've seen you hug them like a teddy bear at, like, two in the morning after a panic attack, and I saw you doing your cyborg heat pack thing after training once. I, uh, might have approached this differently if I'd known Hunk was being an idiot, though, sorry."

"He wasn't being an idiot, he was trying to look out for Pidge. Be happy they were happy."

“Okay," Keith says. "Sure. And I didn't know he’d poisoned the well, or I would’ve known you’d be out to kick your own ass. I just thought someone figured out how to get past all your, y'know, Shiro stuff to take care of you the way you need and I wanted to know more about it.”

“What ‘Shiro stuff’?”

“Like you don’t know,” Keith says. “You’re gonna give me shit for this, but for a while I was just waiting for the right time to say okay, fine, we’ve fought your little battles, time to go home. I was pissed when I thought Pidge had taken the one out and I wouldn’t ever be able to. Like, I’d just gotten you back, I was gonna make sure you were okay, let you get some rest, and this whole thing is kind of the opposite. And I stopped looking for an exit a while ago - “

“Good,” Shiro says. “This has been good for you, I’m glad you’re sticking with it.”

“Not because of me, you idiot. Because at some point you stopped looking like you needed to sleep for a year, hopefully in a hospital bed. If Pidge is part of that, you can do whatever the fuck you want with them.”

“Don’t say that,” Shiro says. “I need to know if I get out of line - “

“Come on,” Keith says; Shiro clenches his fists and bites back the urge to snap at Keith for interrupting him. “You know I’m the wrong person for that. All I wanted when I was fifteen was to sleep with you, I wouldn’t ruin it for Pidge.”

“Gross,” Shiro says, and Keith laughs. He doesn’t - boundaries with Keith were easy, even having to navigate all the mess of being the first person Keith ever really let down his guard around. The line between things Keith wanted that were okay and thing he wanted that weren’t was pretty obvious. With students, too, so many starry-eyed cadets with obvious crushes and a hormone-driven inability to always set their own boundaries in the right places, Shiro just had to throw up one wall, once, and just keep maintaining it. But Keith is his brother, and his students were his students, and Pidge…isn’t. Would have been, under different circumstances. But the circumstances are what they are, and Shiro failed to keep all his boundaries in place, and now they’re all knocked out of alignment and he can’t put them back in place without cutting himself off from - quite literally - his left hand.

“I know I can’t talk you out of anything, when you’re like this,” Keith says. “Be as shitty to yourself as you need to, I guess. But I like seeing you doing okay, so keep doing that, too.”

“No promises,” Shiro says, even if he knows as well as Keith does he wouldn’t stop being exactly the kind of support he is for Pidge as long as they ask for it, even if he decided he could go without things like sleep or someone to talk him down on bad nights. Keith laughs again, and ruffles Shiro’s hair as he leaves the room, leaves Shiro alone with his thoughts and a half-eaten bowl of goo.

*

"You seem tense," Pidge says, as Shiro folds himself up to squeeze into the limited space between them and Lance's chair.

"Don't worry about it. You found something?"

"A little footage," they say. "The last records they have are rebels freeing him from a Galra prison."

"Hm," Shiro says. "Good. If he survived the prison camps he's definitely out there. He's like you, a survivor. We'll find him."

It's not that Pidge doesn't know what Shiro thinks of them, since he makes a point of saying out loud what he appreciates about people. And it's not him being so sure about Matt, because he's made a point of that, too. It's probably just that Pidge is tired, so tired, having to run the two of them through that maze of a prison and fending for themself and failing to do even that without going dark on them for a while - they could have gotten hurt, what if they’d gotten _hurt_ \- and the fighting, and the running, the constant, endless fighting and running, and seeing Matt's face in motion for the first time in too long, it's a little too much but the kind of too much that’s left them too wired to sleep it off. It's just that Shiro is always so Shiro, warm and solid and reassuring, and it's always a lot, and he's so free with it, and being around him makes Pidge feel just so good, all the way through, and they need that so bad right now. If Pidge leaned into Shiro right now he'd just wrap his arm around them and let them snuggle, let them sleep, no matter how uncomfortable being crammed into the corner is. Maybe he'd pet their hair, tell them again how strong they are, and absolutely not tip their face up for a good long kiss they can get lost in because Pidge is way too young to get that (to want that at all). And what a stupid thing to be thinking about right now.

Pidge can feel themself staring but can't quite stop, and Shiro just keeps smiling that good, soft, reassuring smile so if he thinks they're being weird, or God forbid can tell what they're thinking, at least he's not showing it. Slav pushes into their space, so close his face is pressed into their helmet a little, and Pidge doesn't jump _or_ kick him out of the way on reflex which is honestly pretty impressive.

"Slav," Shiro says through clenched teeth, voice strained from the sudden tension in his jaw, "can we help you?"

"I wanted to see what's so interesting about your face," he says. "Pidge was studying it very intently, and I understand they only care about things of scientific importance."

"That's _not_ what I said, dude," Lance says.

"There's nothing important about my face, Slav, go away."

Slav huffs, but listens, scuttling away to another corner of Blue to poke at something that hopefully neither Lance or Blue will mind him messing with. Pidge's face might get less red sometime in the next century, maybe.

"Do you think," Shiro says, still strained, "you could figure out how to preserve his brain so the Blades can still use it if I kill him?"

"Not between now and when we get to the Castle," Pidge says. "Not in Blue."

"Hey," Lance says, "what's wrong with Blue?"

"She's not full of boxes of parts I might need if I get stranded?"

"Oh," Lance says, mollified. "Okay."

Shiro shakes his head and settles a little lower into the little bit of space they have, a little closer to Pidge.

"Show me the footage?"

Pidge has already watched it probably a hundred times, even with all the chaos, and could almost certainly give Shiro a thorough play-by-play, but they bring it up again for him, let the explosion and the couple seconds of Matt's face loop a few times. They watch Shiro while he watches, and manage to resist giving an analysis of every microsecond so he can just take it in himself.

"That's good," Shiro says. "Not great, but there's enough here to get a good start."

"Hopefully."

They let Shiro watch it a couple more times before they start to get too itchy to do something about it now, right now, before the anxious helplessness gets too strong and they have to turn it off. 

"Sometimes," Shiro says, "I think we all made a mistake when we convinced you to stay, back at the beginning."

Everything stops, for just a second, the whole universe freezing around them and going black and white for a beat - oh, wow - two - that's way tougher than Shiro's tough love usually gets - three - if they haven't proven themself now, they never will - four - of course if they're not up for the fight Shiro would remove them before it causes real trouble - and clicks back into place in the normal space-time continuum.

"I can bow out," Pidge says, determined to take it gracefully. "I think Green might let Ryner pilot her, or another Olkari with more experience, we can figure it out when we get to Olkarion. And I could probably be useful back at the castle, but I could always take a pod, get out of your - get to work finding Matt, and - "

"Whoa," Shiro says, "whoa, slow down. That's not what I meant, come on. I didn't want you to go then because I thought you were my responsibility, part of what I owe Matt and the Commander. It seemed so obvious if I sent you, sent little Katie Holt, into deep space with a short-range pod and a stack of shaky leads, you wouldn't last a phoeb."

"You didn't tell me not to go, though," Pidge says. "You were the only one."

"Not because I didn't want to."

"Okay," Pidge says. "You still didn't. And it doesn't matter now, I made the right call. I'm - I'm glad I stayed."

"Me too."

"You're confusing me," Pidge says, and Shiro sighs.

"I was trying to - I wanted to say I didn't know you as well then. None of us did. And I know you now, and I think maybe if we'd sent you off into deep space with a pod and a pile of shaky leads you'd show up a little while later with your family, having destabilized the entire Galran empire in the process."

"Maybe," Pidge says, knows it can't possibly sound as chill as they want because praise from Shiro - especially after a scare like that, apparently - tends to get them grinning like an idiot, warm all the way to their toes. Ugh.

"In ninety-nine point nine eight per cent of realities, you - "

"Don't finish that," Pidge says. "It didn't happen, so it doesn't matter."

"And stop eavesdropping."

"How about you two stop having your mushy heart-to-hearts when we're all within six feet of each other?" Lance says. "It's impossible not to. And if you're done, I was supposed to check in with Allura a couple doboshes ago."

"No one's stopping you," Shiro says, and ducks when Lance tilts his seat back until it's resting just barely on Shiro's helmet. Shiro sighs, harsh and frustrated, clearly not in the mood, ready to snap. Pidge isn't sure they've ever seen him like this, tight, controlled, unflappable Shiro completely unable to keep his reactions in control. He doesn't move away, but he does let Pidge scoot over and force him away so they're fully behind Lance's seat and Shiro's crowding them between it and himself. He smiles a little, just a little, tips his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.

"She's not answering."

"Probably in the middle of extracting the crystal," Shiro says, without opening his eyes. "Or performing the restoration. She'll check in when she's done."

"Yeah," Lance says; he doesn't sound convinced, but he doesn't push for any more reassurance. Blue’s already too crowded but Pidge kind of wishes Hunk were here; he's good with Lance, the only one of them who really _gets_ him. Lance and Pidge just bounce off each other no matter how hard they try, have from the start, and he wouldn’t admit he's anxious in front of Shiro, or a super weird total stranger of an alien. At least the only stupid thing he's likely to do is change course and rush for the Balmera instead of Olkarion, and that’ll only put them a little off schedule.

Everyone's gone quiet - Shiro might even be asleep - and with nothing else to focus on Pidge starts watching the few precious seconds of security footage again. And again, and again. Matt looks - not good, really, but he's standing on his own, no big scars, no missing limbs, thin but he's always been a beanpole and he doesn't look starved. Two people with him, identical masks and outfits, humanoid, roughly Matt's size. And as far as Pidge can tell, unless there's other footage from the same prison at the same time, Matt's the only one they got out. Amateurs, maybe. Or Matt was their goal.

"It's possible," Shiro says.

"What?"

He opens one eye, looks at Pidge. "You were talking to yourself. But if the Galra were smart - which they tend to be - they would've had Matt working on something important, made it obvious to anyone looking he’s high-value. The rebels might have gone after him for the same reasons we went after Slav."

Pidge sighs. "It'd be easier to track them down if they're just sloppy.”

"But less chance they put him in danger if they're well-organized. We'll find him either way."

Pidge just nods, lets the footage roll a couple more times before shutting it off again. It's so good to see his face again, so good it makes their stomach clench and twist up until it hurts. 

"After all this is over," Shiro says, "wherever you end up, I want to stick with you."

"Um." Pidge says, stuck a little on the idea that anything might be over soon. It’s supposed to be, of course, it _should_ be, their plan is solid, but Pidge doesn’t like looking too far ahead. And if Pidge hasn't thought about the moment they defeat Zarkon, achieve their goal, they certainly haven't thought about any of the moments after. But Shiro hasn't just thought about it, he's thought about what it means for them - not just Pidge-them, Shiro-and-Pidge them. All the things he could do - he could probably go _home_ , take Keith and go home and get to be a person and never have to fight anyone else’s battles ever again. "Okay."

"We make a good team," he says, nudges Pidge's leg with his foot and smiles at them, a real one this time. "Let's see what we can do without all this dead weight."

"Blue will spit you into space if you're mean to me," Lance says, "and I won't stop her."

"In fifty-six point three percent of realities, they would survive that," Slav says.

"That goes for you too," Lance says, and sighs. "I wish we'd kept the other Slav."

"In one hundred percent of realities she would eat you," Pidge says, and Shiro laughs. Slav sputters; the joke might have been a mistake, if he’s about to correct them or give them a lecture about probability. Luckily, Lance intervenes.

"Okay," Lance says, "I'm trying Allura again, and then I'm ejecting all of you."

*

Almost as an afterthought, Shiro grabs Pidge’s arm before they can zipline down to their lion. It’ll take everyone a while to get in place and ready for takeoff anyway, and if he doesn’t do something with all the anxious energy thrumming under his skin he’s likely to make mistakes. Not that he knows what exactly he intends to do to work some of it off, especially standing around in the hangar, but Pidge is just...apparently where he goes when he needs to calm down. Has been for a while now, even if it's dangerous to look at that too closely.

“Did you need something?" Pidge turns to face him, and he lets their arm go.

"No," Shiro says. "Just - I was serious, you know. You and me, after this."

"I know," Pidge says, frowning a little. "Aren't we kind of jinxing it by talking so much about 'after'?"

"Probably." Shiro says, closes the few steps of distance between them. "Sorry. I just - "

"Are you okay?"

Still frowning. Shiro shouldn't be bothering them like this, making them worry, distracting them before something this big and complicated and final. If he throws Pidge off their game, if something happens - 

"I don't know," he says. "Sorry."

"I'm not good at pep talks," Pidge says. "But we've done everything we can to ensure this works. Our odds are the best they're ever going to be, and we've done a lot with worse."

Shiro smiles a little, tries to hold onto the image that pops into his head - Pidge with all Lance's brash overconfidence or Shiro's solid reassurance promising a win and a victory party and thousands of grateful, adoring fans as calmly as they usually try to explain something they think is simple to the rest of them. It's kind of terrifying; if it ever happens for real, that's when Shiro will worry.

Pidge's expression softens a little; Shiro knows not to try to smile more, harder, or he'll just look like he's faking it, but he really, really doesn't want them to worry.

"Why are you here, Shiro?" Pidge asks. "You can't want a pep talk, you'd be with Lance or Hunk. You don't want to go over the plan again because you would have made us do it one more time when we were all together. Why me?"

"You make me feel better," Shiro says, because it's true, and he doesn't have anything else that sounds like a real reason, and Pidge looks a few seconds from calling Allura and aborting the mission due to their leader’s sudden breakdown. "I needed to get my head on straight. You help."

"Oh," Pidge says, and Shiro can't read their face at all anymore, so maybe that was the wrong thing to say. It's not Pidge's job to - oh. Pidge steps forward, into the last inch of air between them, and wraps their arms tight around his waist. And there it is, all that nervous energy starting to drip away, drain out through the warmth of their clasped hands at the small of his back. "Good?"

"Yeah," Shiro says, drops his arms to rest on their shoulders. "Thanks."

"You can just ask when you want a hug," Pidge says, muffled in his breastplate. "Idiot."

“Okay," Shiro says; Pidge laughs. Good, good, if they're laughing at him he hasn't done any real damage to their state of mind going into this thing. Probably. Hopefully.

Soon, Coran or Allura will make the call to take off and if Shiro's not in his lion, doesn’t let Pidge get in theirs, he'll just screw up everyone's timing. Soon. Not yet, though, not now when his head is quiet and he can feel the focus he needs just within reach; not now when a different anxiety is creeping in, things he didn't say, things he won't get to say even after everything because he can't leave unfinished business. Or can't leave - well.

"I care about you," Shiro says, voice a little thick - his own throat trying to stop him from crossing any lines, maybe. Too late, too little. "A lot."

Pidge's grip loosens, hands sliding from his back to his sides so they have room to step back a little, look up at him. Soft eyes and cheeks a little pink - Shiro hasn't seen them blush since before anyone knew, since Hunk and Lance used to tease them about their mystery girlfriend - and brow furrowed, like they're thinking, figuring him out, always working, always calculating. Shiro half suspects Pidge understands him more than he does.

"You, too," they say.

Just for a minute everything - the receding nerves and encroaching anxiety and desperate need to focus and the uncomfortably nonzero odds they won't survive this and all of it swirling around the warm, solid center of Pidge holding him just because he needs to be held - aligns perfectly, a once-in-a-lifetime astrological event, and the wrong - right? - part of Shiro's brain goes offline just long enough for him to lean down and press a soft kiss to Pidge's forehead. 

They gasp, a little, soft and quiet, and their cheeks go from pink to red, and they have to talk after this, they have to talk and Shiro has to find Keith and make him put Shiro's head back on straight but whatever happens now...happens.

"I need to get to my lion," Shiro says.

"Be careful," Pidge says. They don't let go of Shiro, but don't stop him when he steps back, turns to go, just let their hands slide off his armor and fall to their sides.

"Of course," he says, turns back to look at them before he turns the corner and can't anymore. "We'll - I'll see you on the other side."

Pidge nods, and bites their lip, and Shiro could delay everyone a little longer, cross the cockpit again and get another hug, make sure he hasn't done any harm, but he doesn't. Can't. Everyone else is waiting.

Zarkon is waiting.


End file.
